Australian Open 2016: Serena Williams advances to Final
By Andrew Jones
Serena Williams advanced to the Australian Open Final, even if it was harder than expected.
It started out easier than expected. It turned out as tough as expected. But for Serena Williams against Agnieszka Radwanska, the 2016 Australian Open first semifinal ended as expected, with another win for the world number one.
Williams made it 9 victories out of 9 matches against the Polish star, taking the contest 6-0, 6-4 in just over an hour to advance to her seventh Australian Open final on Saturday. Williams sealed a 13th consecutive win at the year’s first Slam, continuing her dominance at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne.
In contrast to her shaky start against Maria Sharapova in the quarterfinals, it was the 21-time Grand Slam champion at her optimum best in the first set. It took just 21 minutes for Williams to shutout Radwanska, as the No.4 player in the world showed relatively no shot depth or penetrating serves to even test her toughest opponent. The first set highlighted again the gap the rest of the WTA field is to Williams at the moment, as a newly made No.3 Radwanska and her 13-match win streak look very pedestrian to begin with.
Whispers of a possible double bagel, 6-0, 6-0 scoreline was vanished when Radwanska showed improved shot depth to combine with Williams’ sharp level dipping in the inception of the second set. The Laver crowd, hopefully for a close match, gave Radwanska a cheer for winning her first game of the contest to set a much more competitive tone than the opening set. Radwanska was even buoyed by breaking Serena for the first time in the match to even the set at 3-3 and going on to consolidate her serve in the next game to give some hopes of possibly sending the match to a third set.
The match point and the warm friendly pleasantries between these 2, Serena Williams another Slam final #ausopen https://t.co/A5n9gnSZRo
— Andrew Jerell Jones, Luke 1:37 (IG:twdbk3) (@sluggahjells) January 28, 2016
Still, the gap in power in this matchup was too much for the 26-year-old to produce a historic comeback. Williams took the next three games, closing the match with a love hold to be one match away from tying Steffi Graf’s Grand Slam winning streak at 22. She’ll play each Angelique Kerber of Germany or surprise first time semifinalist Johanna Konta of Great Britain, who play in the second semifinal.