Serena Williams rallies past Lucie Safarova in thrilling quarterfinal – Rogers Cup 2011
American star Serena Williams continued with her renewed form to surge past Czechoslovakia’s Lucie Safarova in their quarter final match at the Rogers Cup 2011, Toronto. The tiring two hours and four minutes match ended
with the score line at 4-6, 6-3, and 6-2 in Williams’ favour and ensured continuity to her nine-match winning streak. Safarova had made a confident start but couldn’t persevere in the next two sets, eventually losing out to the dominating Williams. The American
is now safely berthed in her second semi final match for the season.
The 32nd ranked Safarova had met her hugely popular opponent thrice before, with their head to hear ranking of 0-3 foretelling of her loss in Friday’s conquest. Williams has convincingly beaten
the Czech thrice, always on hard courts and the two contenders had last met at a similar quarter final in 2009’s edition of the Toronto Open. Williams had effortlessly won 6-3, 6-2.
Williams, at 29 years of age, has had an unfortunate season – being plagued with incessant troubles due to her injured right foot. She had to withdraw from the Australian Open in January and couldn’t play at her optimum
up till May, which had sent the former top player’s rankings spiralling down to a current No. 80. Williams marked her comeback with a resounding performance at this year’s Wimbledon, managing to rake in a decent four round campaign before going on to win her
year’s first ATP title at Stanford in late July. Williams took down athletes like Maria Sharapova and Marion Bartoli en route to her victory.
Youngster Safarova had been performing especially well till now in Toronto. She had made headway into the tournament’s quarter finals by ousting Italy’s eighth seed Francesca Schiavone. Despite making it to two finals
at Copenhagen and Kuala Lumpur earlier in the year, Safarova is still on the lookout for her season’s first title win.
Williams made a sluggish start to the match in the first set, which saw her serving first. "I could have had a better chance in the first set but I lost some key points," Williams lamented after the match. Both
the players served at 61%, with Safarova amassing 94% points against Williams’ 70%. However the American committed 4 extremely insensible double faults, which ultimately proved to be the cause for her failure in the first set. With scores levelled at 3-3,
Safarova registered a serve break to propel ahead and win 6-4.
The American made an astounding comeback, making use of her sheer power and excellent prowess at shot making to empathically win the next two sets 6-3, 6-2. Williams was able to connect 62% of her serves in the second set and 55%
in the last, without losing a serve in either. Safarova meanwhile gave away a breakpoint early on in the second set and her opponent wreaked havoc by registering 2 breakpoints in the last set.
The unseeded former World No.1 Williams next faces fourth seed Victoria Azarenka in their semi finals’ match at Rogers Cup. Azarenka is the only top seed left in the tournament and has flamboyantly made her way to the semis without
losing a single set till now.
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