Serena Williams produced a stunning performance to defeat Simona Halep to set up an Australian Open semi-final showdown with Naomi Osaka on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The 39-year-old American took a step closer to a record-equalling 24th Grand Slam title with a 6-3, 6-3 win against the second seed Halep.<\/p>\n
Williams said that her level was improving ahead of her meeting with Japan\u2019s Naomi Osaka, who came out on top in their encounter at 2018 US Open title match.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely think this is the best match I have played this tournament, for sure,\u201d said the 10th seed.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously I had to, going up against the number two in the world, so I knew I had to do better.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a match that lasted for over 80 minutes, Williams had a mixed day with 24 winners and 33 unforced errors in the contest. The 23 time Grand Slam winner has not won a major since her 2017 Australian Open triumph.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Halep reached the semi-finals last year and was a runner-up in 2018.<\/p>\n
William started quickly with her fiery shots with a break of serve to lead 2-0 before Halep\u2019s resilience helped in wiping out the early deficit.<\/p>\n
However, Williams continued to find angles with her powerful returns, allowing her to break again for 4-2 lead before winning the first set.<\/p>\n
At the start of the second set, Williams conceded several unforced errors and double faults that helped Halep break for 2-0 lead.<\/p>\n
After the pair exchanged three more breaks, Williams bounced back strong off the final five games to clinch an impressive victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realised I was making a lot of unforced errors in the games I lost and knew I had an opportunity to play better,\u201d said Williams, who reached the 40th Grand Slam semi-final of her career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Serena Williams produced a stunning performance to defeat Simona Halep to set up an Australian Open semi-final showdown with Naomi\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":37774,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[689,1421,615,269,1419,202],"class_list":["post-17026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-australian-open","tag-grand-slam","tag-naomi-osaka","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\/17026","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=17026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}