Serena Williams stumbled to the ground, her taped right ankle turning, her body twisting and racket flying during the fourth round of the Australian Open at Melbourne Park.<\/p>\n
Williams indicated that she was OK and grabbed the last two games to pull 6-4,2-6, 6-4 victory over No 7 seed Aryna Sabalenka to reach the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Two years ago at this tournament, Williams was on the verge of a quarterfinals win when she hurt her ankle and ended losing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, my first thought was, \u2018Not another ankle sprain in Australia.\u2019 But I knew immediately that it wasn\u2019t. Then I was more embarrassed than anything. I was like, \u2018Oh, my goodness.\u2019 I don\u2019t like falling,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I was fine. I mean, once I realized I didn\u2019t twist my ankle, like at all, I was like, \u2018OK, I\u2019m good, let me just get up,\u201dshe added.<\/p>\n
The two hit the ball very hard, over and over in Rod Laver Arena, but Williams claimed the upper hand. She ended up having more winner, 30-24 and more aces 9-4 while hitting her best-in-the-game serve which clocked to 126 mph.<\/p>\n
She showed no signs of trouble from her left Achilles tendon that hampered her in the U.S Open semi-final loss in September and forced to withdraw French Open before the second round later that month.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve worked really hard on my movement. Yeah, I like retrieving balls. I mean, obviously, I like to be on the offense, but I can play defense really well, as well,\u201d the 39-year-old American said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t think about my Achilles. It\u2019s so good to not think about it. Oh, my goodness.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Sabalenka on the other hand was visibly and audibly frustrated as she screamed after she lost points.<\/p>\n
Up next, Williams is assured to face either Simona Halep or Iga Swiatek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Serena Williams stumbled to the ground, her taped right ankle turning, her body twisting and racket flying during the fourth\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":37769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1454,689,1455,269,1419,202],"class_list":["post-17020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-australian-open","tag-iga-swiatek","tag-serena-williams","tag-simona-halep","tag-tennis"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17020","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=17020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}