MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - JANUARY 26: Serena Williams of the United States serves in her semifinal match against Mirjana Lucic-Baroni of Croatia on day 11 of the 2017 Australian Open at Melbourne Park on January 26, 2017 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Serena Williams reached her tenth straight U.S. Open quarterfinals on Sunday after defeating Estonia’s Kaia Kanepi in three sets.
Following her 6-0, 4-6, 6-3 victory, the 36-year-old superstar will next face the eighth-seeded Czech veteran Karolina Pliskova on Tuesday night at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Six-time U.S. Open champion Williams, this year’s No. 17 seed, last won the tournament in 2014 and is chasing her first Grand Slam trophy since giving birth in September 2017. Pliskova reached the women’s singles final in Flushing, Queens in 2016 — after defeating Williams in the semifinals — but lost to German star Angelique Kerber in three sets.
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Williams also needs just three more victories to match Margaret Court‘s record 24 Grand Slam singles titles.
Third-seeded American Sloane Stephens — the defending U.S. Open champion, who seems to have gained strong support from the local crowd — and 19th-seeded Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia will face off in the earlier women’s quarterfinal at 12 p.m. EST on Tuesday.
Williams and Pliskova are scheduled to play at 7 p.m. EST. Both this and the earlier match will air on ESPN. The other two women’s semifinals — which include 14th-seeded American Madison Keys facing 30th-seeded Spaniard Carla Suarez Navarro — will be held on Wednesday.
On the men’s side, Roger Federer is out of the competition after losing in four sets to unseeded Australian John Millman — the World No. 55 — in Monday’s fourth-round match. The No.-seed Swiss reportedly blamed humidity and poor air circulation for his defeat. Federer dropped the last three sets, two of them via tiebreak.
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Third-seeded Argentine Juan Martin del Potro — the 2009 champion — will face 11th-seeded American John Isner in Tuesday’s first quarterfinal, while top-seed Rafael Nadal and ninth-seeded Austrian Dominic Thiem will play each other in the second match of the day.
No. 6-seed Novak Djokovic, No. 7-seed Marin Cilic and Japan’s Kei Nishikori are also through to the last eight.
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