Serena Williams overcame the slow start and two set points to beat Anastasia Potapova 7-6 (5), 6-2 to reach the fourth round at the Australian Open on Friday.<\/p>\n
Williams overcame a slow start to thwart Anastasia Potapova and ensured her quest for history at the Australian Open continued.<\/p>\n
The 23- time Grand Slam winner had 31 unforced errors but wore the Russian in a 97-minute match on Rod Laver Arena to set up a showdown with seventh seed Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus in the fourth round.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely good to be in the fourth round,\u201d said Williams.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came out of the blocks not like I have been (before). But it\u2019s all about surviving and playing better every round,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The 10th seed has been in a strong form so far in Melbourne but was out-of-sorts in an error-strewn start in the first set. But Potapova, 19, had a meltdown trying to serve out the first set with five double fouls missing the golden opportunity.<\/p>\n
Williams then refocused and won a tiebreaker before cruising through the second set.<\/p>\n
The seven-time Australian Open champion will play Sabalenka, who defeated American Ann Li 6-3, 6-1 on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Serena Williams overcame the slow start and two set points to beat Anastasia Potapova 7-6 (5), 6-2 to reach the\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":37767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[689,1421,269,202],"class_list":["post-17018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-australian-open","tag-grand-slam","tag-serena-williams","tag-tennis"],"reading_time":"1 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}