Serena Williams eyes second week of U.S. Open after another easy win
NEW YORK — You could have said the highlight of Serena Williams’ week one at the U.S. Open has been her serve, but Saturday afternoon inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, the world No. 1 broke out a pair of highlighter pink sleeves.
Her tennis isn’t the only thing that has been making a statement in her first three matches of the year’s final major. Williams looked in supreme form after beating Sweden’s Johanna Larsson 6-2, 6-1 to book herself — and her sleeves — into the second week of the tournament.
“They are my Wonder Woman sleeves,” Williams, 34, joked on court. “Or Super Woman.”
It might take super powers from Yaroslava Shvedova, a big-hitting veteran who has had a resurgent 2016, to beat Serena in the fourth round on Monday. Shvedova recently made a run to the Wimbledon quarterfinals.
The latter stages of a Grand Slam are where Serena has historically been the hardest to crack, but in the last 12 months that script has been flipped: She lost in the semifinals here a year ago, then the finals of both the Australian and French Opens earlier this year, the first back-to-back major final losses of her career.
But Williams collected her 22nd major at Wimbledon eight weeks ago, and this fortnight looks to go one better than the Open era record she now shares with Steffi Graf.
Saturday she passed Martina Navratilova at 306 match wins at the majors, notching No. 307 and tying her with Roger Federer for the most all time – another record. She has also not been broken on her serve this tournament, and Saturday batted away the lone break point she’s faced in three rounds.
“The serve is definitely a big, big asset in her game,” Patrick Mouratoglou, her coach, said. “When she serves as good as this, it puts so much pressure on her opponents. It allows her to be aggressive on her returns and then it’s very difficult to beat her.”
No. 5 Simona Halep, a brick-walled baseliner, has beaten Serena before and looms in the quarterfinals should their seeds hold, while sister Venus and world No. 4 Agnieszka Radwanska (who is on a seven-match winning streak) present different semifinal challenges for the world No. 1.
Angelique Kerber, who beat Williams in Melbourne for her maiden Slam, is on track for the finals on the bottom half of the draw, Kerber being the biggest threat to Williams’ stranglehold on the world No. 1 ranking.
Williams, in fact, could lose the No. 1 ranking if she fails to make the semifinals, a spot she’s held for 186 consecutive weeks. (Another tied record with Graf, mind you.) A Serena-Kerber final would mean the winner walks away as world No. 1.
Williams came into the U.S. Open with a bum right shoulder, but she has said the pain has almost completely subsided. It’s nowhere to be seen in her play.
"It definitely feels solid," she told reporters. "I'm doing a lot of work on it so I can keep it in this position. I'm not going to stop (that)."
Can she and will she be the unbeatable, superhero-like Serena in week two that she’s displayed in the past?
“I think she raises her level when she needs to depending on who she is playing,” Mouratoglou said. “When a champion needs to, they step up. There is more reason to step up in the second week"
Follow Nick McCarvel on Twitter @NickMcCarvel.