Maria Sharapova has lost only five games in four matches on the way to the Australian Open quarter-finals, a record at the season’s first major that seems to be immaterial to the 25-year-old Russian.
The world No. 2 beat Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium 6-1, 6-0 on Sunday to continue a dominant and unparalleled run.
“Well I’m certainly happy to be playing this well, but ... it only gets tougher from here,” said Sharapova, who is playing her first tournament of the year after withdrawing from an exhibition match in South Korea and a warmup event in Brisbane because of an injured collarbone.
Photo: Reuters
Steffi Graf conceded only eight games in her opening four matches in Melbourne in 1989, when she won the second of her three straight Australian Open titles. Monica Seles matched that mark. Sharapova has been even more dominant.
She started with a pair of 6-0, 6-0 wins — the first time that has happened at a major since 1985 — and then beat seven-time Grand Slam winner Venus Williams 6-1, 6-3 in the third round.
The reigning French Open champion is showing no signs of trouble with the collarbone in Melbourne, where she last won the title in 2008.
“The year that I won here I don’t think there were many games that I lost, but I don’t think it was five or six,” she said, reflecting on a run to the title where she beat three players who had been ranked world No. 1. “Toughest draw in my career.”
It has not been as tough this year, but she next plays fellow Russian Ekaterina Makarova, who ousted fifth seed Angelique Kerber 7-5, 6-4.
Sharapova beat Makarova in the quarter-finals last year on her way to the final, which she lost in straight sets to Victoria Azarenka.
Sharapova had to beat former world No. 1 Justine Henin in the quarter-finals when she won in 2008. Last year, she beat Makarova at the same stage en route to the final, but Makarova, ranked 19th, said she is better prepared this time.
“I really want to play against Maria,” Makarova said. “Now I’m pretty confident and I like my game.”
Li Na saved a set point in the tiebreaker, before beating Julia Goerges 7-6 (8/6), 6-1. She is next due to play fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska, who beat 13th seed Ana Ivanovic 6-2, 6-4 for her 13th consecutive win. Radwanska won the Auckland and Sydney titles before traveling to Melbourne.
In men’s matches, fourth seed David Ferrer had a 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 win over 16th seed Kei Nishikori of Japan to reach the quarter-finals, where he meets Nicolas Almagro.
Nishikori had won two of his previous three matches with Ferrer and was a quarter-finalist in Australia last year, but struggled with 65 unforced errors in the 2 hour, 10 minute match.
Almagro advanced later yesterday, leading 6-2, 5-1 when eighth seed Janko Tipsaveric retired.
In the late match, top seed Novak Djokovic of Serbia was in a tight battle with Switzerland’s Stanislas Wawrinka, with the score standing at 1-6, 7-5, 6-4, 6-7 (5/7), 10-10 as at press time last night.
The winner plays fifth seed Tomas Berdych, who needed five match points in the tiebreaker before beating South Africa’s Kevin Anderson 6-3, 6-2, 7-6 (15/13) to reach the quarter-finals for the third straight year.
In the women’s doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and her partner, Peng Shuai of China, pushed their top-seeded Italian opponents to the brink, before succumbing in the third round.
Hsieh and Peng lost to Italy’s Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci 6-4, 0-6, 7-5 in 2 hours, 10 minutes, denying them a shot at a quarter-final showdown against the Williams sisters.
Additional reporting by staff writer, with CNA
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier