Stosur outlasts Serena to reach French Open semis
Sam Stosur has outlasted top seed Serena Williams to book a place in the French Open semi-finals for the second consecutive year.
Seventh seeded Stosur picked up where she left off at the end of her fourth-round victory against Justine Henin, holding her ground against Williams as the first five games passed without a break of serve.
But as Stosur – one of a rare breed of players whose biceps aren’t dwarfed by Serena’s – continued to pressure the world No. 1 with some power hitting of her own, she eventually secured the first service break to take a 4-2 lead in the first set.
From there, the Australian took the remaining two games of the set without the loss of a point as Williams struggled to cope with a taste of her own medicine.
Stosur’s march towards the semi-finals continued with an easy hold in the opening game of the second set, but the seventh seed then squandered a triple break-point opportunity on Serena’s serve, as the American sought to bully her way back into the match.
Stosur secured the break to go up 5-3 and serve for the match, then double faulted to trail 0-30 and was ultimately broken for the first time in the match.
The door ajar, the top seed set about barging her way through it, holding her serve with some powerful hitting, before Stosur held firm to secure a 6-5 lead and force the 12-time Grand Slam champion to serve to stay in the match.
As Serena’s shots started to land where they were intended, the momentum began to swing in the 28-year-old’s favour and she secured the mini-break on the first point of the tiebreak when Stosur just overshot the baseline, as the Australian began to make the same kinds of mistakes that had marred Serena’s match in the first set-and-a-half.
Behind those trademark shades, the usually inscrutable Stosur must have felt the set, and perhaps the match, slipping away as Williams took control of the tiebreak and then levelled the match at one set apiece and marked the occasion with an emphatic scream.
A double fault sealed the break for Stosur in the opening game of the second set, but Williams immediately broke back as the match continued to deliver more twists and turns, and neither player seemed quite able to take it by the scruff of the neck.
As the forehand that had proved her biggest weapon in the first half of the match deserted her, Stosur found herself facing match point as she served to stay in the match at 4-5, but was able to stave off defeat.
At 6-6, it was Stosur who was rewarded for her tenacity as she secured the crucial break and surged towards the finish line and a 6-2, 6-7, 8-6 victory in two hours and 24 minutes.
In the other women’s singles quarter-final on day 11, fourth seed Jelena Jankovic recorded a 7-5, 6-4 victory over the unseeded Yaroslava Shvedova to book her place in the final four.
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