New York – In a dominating performance, Venus Williams not only grabbed a spot in the fourth round of the US Open but also joined her sister Serena in polishing off a Bondarenko sister.
Even Venus Williams was pleased with her game after she pummeled Alona Bondarenko 6-2 6-1 Saturday and moved a step closer to a quarterfinal clash with her sister. In her first-round match, Serena beat Alona’s sister, Kateryna Bondarenko, 6-1 6-4.
“It always helps when I don’t make a lot of errors,” said Venus, who has been producing the same kind of tennis that took her to her fifth Wimbledon title earlier this summer. “I felt like I needed to be aggressive.”
“Little Sister” kept pace Saturday as Serena Williams swept past Japan’s Ai Sugiyama 6-2, 6-1.
Ninth-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland eliminated Dominika Cibulkova of the Slovak Republic 6-0 6-3 and will next face Venus Williams. In their only other meeting, Radwanska upset the heavily-favored American.
Amelie Mauresmo ended the dreams of her French compatriot Julie Coin 6-4 6-4. Coin, a qualifier, reached the third round with a shocking upset over the world’s top-ranked player, Ana Ivanovic.
In a third-round men’s singles, Rafael Nadal, playing his first major tournament as the top seed, was pushed but not bothered in his 6-4 6-3 6-0 win over Serbia’s Viktor Troicki. The score doesn’t reflect the tightness of many of the games in the first two sets when Troicki matched Nadal’s supreme shot-making but came up with a few more errors.
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In another men’s match, American Sam Querrey upset 14th-seeded Ivo Karlovic 7-6 (5) 7-6 (5) 6-2 in a slugfest. Querrey finished with 20 aces, four fewer than the 6-foot-10 (2.08m) Karlovic. The Croat had 59 winners in his losing effort, while Querrey, at 6-6 (1.98m) the short one on the court, ended up with 45 winners and just 13 unforced errors.
The two sets of sisters – Williams and Bondarenko – are not strangers. On their way to the doubles gold medal at the Beijing Olympics, Venus and Serena beat the Bondarenkas in the semifinals.
“I’ve had an unbelievable summer,” Venus said. “I couldn’t have asked for more, except probably another gold in Beijing.
“Obviously I tried to win the singles, too, but it didn’t work out. But I’d much rather share that triumph with a team member, and then with my sister, than anything else.”
Playing in her 10th US Open, a tournament she has won twice, Williams was impressive. She slammed nine aces and had 32 winners as she completely dominated Bondarenko, who kept the ball in play, running down shot after shot, but didn’t have enough firepower to hurt the elder Williams.
Seeded seventh in this, the final Grand Slam tournament of the year, Williams feels her Wimbledon triumph this summer has helped her on the hard courts of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
“I think that definitely the Wimbledon win helped me a lot to change my mentality, to realize not every thing had to be perfect all the time. … Now if I don’t have a perfect practice, I know I can play. I think that helps me to relax.”
A relaxed Williams is in the third round, as is her sister Serena. If both win again, they will face each other for the first time since the Wimbledon final. It would also be their earliest meeting in a tournament since the 2005 US Open when they clashed in the fourth round.
“I would have loved if we could have met in the finals,” Venus said of her sister. “My biggest worry is she’s so good. I’m thinking about how I’m going to get past her.”
First, though, there’s the little matter of Agnieszka Radwanska.