A shocker: Collins tops her idol Venus Williams in Miami Open

KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. — Danielle Collins’ favorite player, for as long as she can remember, has been Venus Williams.

Clearly, she wasn’t star-struck when facing her idol.

Collins got the biggest win of her pro career Wednesday night, shocking the eighth-seeded Williams 6-2, 6-3 in the Miami Open quarterfinals. Collins needed to survive two qualifying matches before making the main draw at Key Biscayne, and will now meet sixth-seeded Jelena Ostapenko in Thursday’s semifinals.

“The first time I saw Venus in the locker room, I nearly cried,” Collins said. “I mean, I’ve idolized her my whole life. She’s been my favorite player for forever. This is such a special moment, I’m just trying to wrap my head around it.”

Collins topped U.S. Open finalist Madison Keys earlier this month at Indian Wells and made a much bigger statement with this win. She threw both fists into the air when Williams couldn’t handle a serve on Collins’ second match point, and even the three-time champion at Key Biscayne gave her a big smile when they shook hands at the net.

“I’m just starting to finally put all of the pieces together,” said Collins, the 2014 and 2016 NCAA champion at Virginia.

Collins, No. 93 in the world for a few more days, will more than double her career earnings when the money from Miami arrives. She came to Key Biscayne with $305,385 in career earnings, which she’ll add at least $327,965 to now that she’s in the semifinals. And she’s going to soar in the world rankings, to no lower than 67th.

No qualifier has ever gone this deep at Key Biscayne, though Collins looked perfectly comfortable on the stage. She rarely faced trouble, offered confident fist pumps for much of the night and set the tone by breaking Williams — one of her idols, someone who’s been playing pro matches for about as long as the 24-year-old Collins has been alive — with her opening chance in each set.

And now Collins, who took the more-unusual path through college to pro life, still has a shot at becoming perhaps Miami’s most surprising champion.

“You don’t have to do it the traditional way,” Williams said.

For as easy as Collins made it look Wednesday night, John Isner had an even easier time in his quarterfinal.

The big-serving Isner made the Miami semifinals for the second time in four years, needing just over an hour to overpower South Korea’s Hyeon Chung 6-1, 6-4. The 14th-seeded Isner finished with 13 aces, won all but one of his 32 first-serve points and avenged a loss to the 19th-seeded Chung at Auckland in his first match of the year back in January.

“I played extremely well,” said Isner, who dropped six of his first eight matches of 2018 before arriving in Miami. “Every match I’ve played in this tournament, I’ve gotten better. I’ve gotten stronger and that’s a very, very good sign.”

Isner was broken twice by Chung when they met in Auckland. He faced only one break point on Wednesday.

“It’s perfect conditions,” said Isner, who lost to Novak Djokovic in the 2015 semifinals at Key Biscayne. “I’ve played well here in the past and I’m so happy that I’m playing well here again.”

He’ll hope that trend continues in the semifinals.

Isner — who ousted second-seeded Marin Cilic earlier this week — will next face No. 5 seed Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina, who rallied to beat No. 20 Milos Raonic of Canada 5-7, 7-6 (1), 7-6 (3) in the late match Wednesday in a slugfest that lasted nearly three hours.

Ostapenko got her spot in the semifinals by ousting fourth-seeded Elina Svitolina 7-6 (3), 7-6 (5) and now will get the upstart Collins with a berth in Saturday’s final at stake. The other women’s semifinal is Thursday afternoon, with No. 13 Sloane Stephens set to meet three-time Miami champion Victoria Azarenka.

source: sports.inquirer.net

Williams edges Kvitova for 1st US Open semifinal since 2010

NEW YORK — When her work was done, her first trip to the U.S. Open semifinals since 2010 secured, if just barely, Venus Williams sat in her sideline chair and beamed .

Williams reached her third major semifinal of the season — something she last did 15 years ago — by edging two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (2) on Tuesday night to a soundtrack of thunderous partisan support under a closed roof at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

“Definitely felt like a special match. No easy moments, not easy to hold serve or break serve,” Williams said. “This match meant a lot to me, obviously, playing at home and, of course, it being a major.”

The 37-year-old Williams, who won titles at Flushing Meadows way back in 2000 and 2001, trailed 3-1 in the third set before digging out of the hole with a little help: Kvitova’s eighth double-fault handed over the break that made it 3-all.

And Kvitova’s ninth double-fault got Williams to match point in the tiebreaker.

“Sometimes you have opportunities, and sometimes you take them and you don’t, but it’s not like you get opportunity after opportunity after opportunity in these sorts of matches,” Williams said. “You have to take the ones you have.”

She will face unseeded Sloane Stephens on Thursday in the first all-American women’s semifinal in New York since 2002. Stephens advanced earlier Tuesday with a 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (4) victory over 16th-seeded Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia. It is Stephens’ deepest run at any major since 2013 and the apex of a recovery from foot surgery in January.

There could be another U.S. vs. U.S. semifinal on the other side of the draw: 15th-seeded Madison Keys and 20th-seeded CoCo Vandeweghe play their quarterfinals Wednesday.

“It’s been a great two weeks for American tennis. Seeing all the American players in the draw and all of them advancing so deep and competing so well,” Williams said. “It’s great to see this resurgence, and I hope it can continue.”

Kvitova, seeded 13th, was hoping to prolong her comeback from a knife attack less than nine months ago by reaching the first U.S. Open semifinal of her career. She needed surgery on her racket-holding hand after she was cut by an intruder at her home in the Czech Republic in December. She returned to the tour at the French Open in May, losing in the second round there and at Wimbledon.

Kvitova has said she still does not have full strength in her left hand. But she was often at her powerful best against No. 9 Williams, especially in the last two sets, repeatedly delivering big, flat forehands.

Neither woman played with a ton of subtlety, mainly trading stinging groundstrokes from the baseline on exchanges that grew in intensity as the 2-hour, 34-minute encounter went along.

“I had my chances,” Kvitova said. “Kind of.”

Williams, who revealed in 2011 she had been diagnosed with an energy-sapping autoimmune disease, is the oldest women’s semifinalist in New York in the Open era, which dates to 1968.

But this sort of throwback run is becoming almost routine again for Williams, who made it to the Australian Open final in January of this year, then the Wimbledon final in July. In 2002, she participated in three Grand Slam finals, losing each to her younger sister Serena.

Stephens, ranked 83rd, has won 13 of her past 15 matches, all on hard courts, reaching the semifinals at three consecutive tournaments for the only time in her career.

She had an operation in January, and while forced to stay away from her sport, she found a new appreciation for it. The time off also allowed her to enjoy other aspects of life.

“I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t do all the things that I wanted to do. But I did get to hang out with my family and see my little cousin’s soccer games and go to weddings and baby showers and stuff. All the things that I thought before I was missing out on, (now) I really wasn’t,” said Stephens, whose late father, John Stephens, was the 1988 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year for the New England Patriots, and whose mother, Sybil Smith, was Boston University’s first All-American in women’s swimming.

“It was just kind of, like, eye-opening,” Stephens added. “When I wasn’t playing, like, of course I loved my time off, but when I got back to playing tennis, it was, like, this is where I want to be. This is what I love doing.”

In the men’s quarterfinals, No. 12 Pablo Carreno Busta of Spain and No. 28 Kevin Anderson of South Africa each advanced to the final four at a Grand Slam tournament for the first time.

Anderson got past 17th-seeded Sam Querrey of the United States 7-6 (5), 6-7 (9), 6-3, 7-6 (7) in a match that ended shortly before 2 a.m. Wednesday. Much, much earlier, Carreno Busta of Spain had no trouble beating No. 29 Diego Schwartzman of Argentina 6-4, 6-4, 6-2. It was Carreno Busta’s first match of the tournament against an opponent who was not a qualifier.

“I know that I didn’t win matches against top players — top-10 or top-20 players,” Carreno Busta said, “but I am very happy with my tournament.”

source: sports.inquirer.net

Williams wins at US Open to stay in No. 1 hunt; Konta out

NEW YORK — Venus Williams stayed in the crowded hunt for the No. 1 ranking — even though she had no idea that she has a shot at that spot.


Johanna Konta, a Wimbledon semifinalist just last month, dropped out of that chase with a first-round exit as the U.S. Open got started Monday.

The No. 9-seeded Williams overcame a mid-match lapse to pick up a 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 victory in Arthur Ashe Stadium against Viktoria Kuzmova of Slovakia, a 19-year-old qualifier who is ranked 135th.

It was the first tour-level, main-draw match of Kuzmova’s career, and the 967th for Williams, who won the title at Flushing Meadows in 2000 and 2001, in addition to her five Wimbledon championships. Williams is in her 19th U.S. Open; she reached the final in her 1997 debut, about eight months before Kuzmova was born.

“I had no idea what she looked like, who she was, anything. But she played amazing. She played well, served well, competed well. Definitely a match I had to earn,” said Williams, who at 37 is the oldest woman in the field. “I definitely wasn’t expecting or planning on dropping sets today. But things happen. That’s why we play the match, because you have to win the match. So it’s just all about regrouping. It’s the first round. You figure out what’s going on.”

She was up a set, plus a break in the second at 2-0, when she faltered. Kuzmova broke for 2-1, then pulled at even at 3-all before taking three games in a row to force a third set. But Williams righted herself there, breaking for a 2-0 lead, then digging out of a love-40 hole with five consecutive points for 3-0 and was on her way.

Williams entered the U.S. Open as one of eight women with a chance to rise atop the WTA rankings by tournament’s end.

Not that it was foremost on her mind. Indeed, she said she was unaware of that possibility.

“I just want to win, and if you get the win, you get the ranking,” said Williams, who was already at No. 1 in 2002.

Before the American’s match was over, that number of ranking contenders was reduced to seven, because the No. 7-seeded Konta was bounced by 78th-ranked Aleksandra Krunic of Serbia 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.

“I don’t take anything for granted,” said Konta, who was a semifinalist at Wimbledon just last month. “I think it would be quite obnoxious of me to come in here expecting I have a right to be in second week.”

Konta, who lost to Williams in the Wimbledon semifinals, figured to be Britain’s best chance for a deep run these two weeks, because the country’s top male player, Andy Murray, withdrew on Saturday with an injured hip.

Instead, she was among a crop of seeded players on the way out the door at a tournament already missing several top names, including the biggest in women’s tennis: Williams’ older sister Serena, who is expecting a baby.

“We always coach each other, pretty much,” Williams said.

While the most anticipated matchup of Day 1 was scheduled for Monday night — five-time major champion Maria Sharapova’s first Grand Slam action since her doping suspension, against No. 2 seed Simona Halep — the afternoon was filled with quite a few seeded players joining Konta on the way out.

For every victory by someone such as Wimbledon champion Garbine Muguruza or 2014 U.S. Open champion Marin Cilic, there was a surprise or two.

The men’s seeded losers included No. 21 David Ferrer, who was the runner-up at the 2013 French Open, No. 25 Karen Khachanov and No. 32 Robin Hasse. On the women’s side, there as No. 21 Ana Konjuh, No. 24 Kiki Bertens and No. 32 Lauren Davis.

source: sports.inquirer.net

Djokovic facing Wimbledon humiliation as Sunday play confirmed

World number one and defending champion Novak Djokovic was facing Wimbledon humiliation on Friday before rain saved him from his worst defeat at the tournament since 2008.

Three-time winner Djokovic, who is halfway to the first calendar Grand Slam in 47 years, dropped the first two sets of his third round clash against American 28th seed Sam Querrey 7-6 (8/6), 6-1.

But after just 73 minutes of action, rain sent the pair running for cover off Court One, giving 12-time major winner Djokovic welcome sanctuary before play was called off for the day.

By the end of Friday, which had seen just three hours of action on outside courts, only 15 of the scheduled 32 ties had been completed.

That led organizers to decide that for the first time since 2004, and only the third time in history, play will take place on the middle Sunday

Djokovic, who has an 8-1 record over Querrey, has made at least the quarter-finals on his last seven visits to Wimbledon since losing to Marat Safin in the second round eight years ago.

In contrast, seven-time champion Roger Federer had the advantage of playing under the Centre Court roof and became the first man in the fourth round thanks to a 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 win over Britain’s Daniel Evans

Federer, beaten in the last two finals by Djokovic, has been aided by a generous draw that pitted him against two lowly Brits in world number 772 Marcus Willis and then world number 91 Evans.

“I didn’t make the draw but it’s been fun playing against Marcus and now Dan,” said Federer who now has 305 Grand Slam singles match victories, which moves him within touching distance of Martina Navratilova’s record of 306.

The All England Club, which has suffered three severely-hit rain days in the first week, said that playing on Sunday was needed to catch-up.

Williams sisters survive

In a further effort to cut the backlog, all men’s second round doubles matches were reduced to best of three sets rather than five.

There were still four second round singles to finish including two-time champion Petra Kvitova against Russia’s Ekaterina Makarova.

“The move has been made in order to reduce the backlog of matches and to allow The Championships to finish as scheduled,” said a club spokesman.

World number one and defending champion Serena Williams defeated US compatriot Christina McHale 6-7 (7/9), 6-2, 6-4 on Centre Court, only just avoiding what would have been her earliest-ever Wimbledon defeat.

The six-time Wimbledon champion will face Germany’s Annika Beck for a place in the last 16.

“It was a really good match. She played great and she always plays great against me,” Williams said after seeing off the world number 65.

“I know mentally no-one can break me.”

Five-time champion Venus Williams reached the last-16, seeing off Russian teenager Daria Kasatkina 7-5, 4-6, 10-8 in a tie featuring a rain stoppage when she held match point.

Williams, 36, was 7-6, 40-30 up on Kasatkina’s serve in the final set on Court One when play was halted.

Seventy-five minutes later, the players returned with Kasatkina saving the match point, the second of the day.

But Williams eventually triumphed at the third time of asking when the 19-year-old dumped a forehand into the net.

Williams, the eighth seed, goes on to face Spain’s Carla Suarez Navarro for a place in the quarter-finals.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever played a 10-8 set. That was pretty intense. All you can think is ‘hold serve’. Easier said than done,” said the American.

Juan Martin del Potro admitted he felt “alive again” after the injury-plagued former US Open champion sent Swiss fourth seed Stan Wawrinka crashing out.

Playing in his first Grand Slam tournament since the 2014 Australian Open, his 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7/2), 6-3 second round victory over Wawrinka brought back memories of his stunning 2009 US Open win before a series of wrist injuries pushed him to the brink of retirement.

The world number 165 from Argentina, who was a semi-finalist in 2013 in what was his last appearance at Wimbledon, next faces French 32nd seed Lucas Pouille.

“It feels amazing, I feel alive again,” said the 27-year-old who has undergone three wrist surgeries in the last two years.

source: sports.inquirer.net

Williams sisters head into last eight in Miami

Sisters Serena and Venus Williams marched into the quarter-finals of the Miami Open after straight-set wins at Key Biscayne on Monday (Tuesday, PHL time).

World number one Serena beat 24th seeded Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-2 6-3 producing 29 winners and 20 unforced errors.

Kuzentsova, who owns two grand slam titles, had beaten Serena twice in their previous nine meetings but the outcome of this contest never looked in doubt.

"I know Svetlana is super tough and we always have super tough matches," said Serena.

"It seems like I'm cruising but don't think I'm cruising. I have my matches and I'm really focused in my matches because all these players I play are really good," she added.

Serena has now won 18 straight matches and she is looking to add to her seven titles in Miami with her third straight triumph after winning in 2013 and 2014.

Venus continued a winning streak of her own -- making it seven wins in seven against fellow former world number one Caroline Wozniacki with a 6-3 7-6(1) victory.

The win also made it seven wins in her last eight against top 10 opponents, highlighting Venus's return to form after her health problems.

The older Williams sister will face Carla Suarez Navarro in the last eight following the Spaniard's win over seventh seed Agnieszka Radwanska 5-7 6-0 6-4.

Romanian third seed Simona Halep won through after beating Italy's Flavia Pennetta 6-3 7-5. - Reuters

Venus upsets Serena to reach Rogers Cup final

Venus Williams upset little sister Serena 6-7(2) 6-2 6-3 on Saturday to register the first win over her top ranked sibling in five years and move into the finals of Rogers Cup in Montreal.

It marked the 25th time the illustrious tennis siblings had squared off but the first time Venus had come out on top since a 2009 semi-finals encounter in Dubai.

Despite the loss, world number one and defending champion Serena holds a 14-11 edge in their head-to-head showdowns after coming out on top in their previous five encounters, including the 2009 Wimbledon final.

But clashes which at one time were an almost a regular and welcomed occurrence on tennis courts across the globe have become rarer-and-rarer with their meeting in Montreal just the second since the 2009 Tour championships.

While a Williams/Williams matchup is one tennis fans have always looked forward to, for the sisters it is something they could live without.

There was little excitement when the match was decided, the two sisters walking slowly to the net and hugging briefly.

Venus' reaction at ending her sister's Roger Cup title defense was muted as she turned and offered a small wave to the crowd before slumping into her court side chair and staring blankly across the court.

The older Williams will now await the winner of the other semifinal between third seeded Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland and Russian Ekaterina Makarova. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com