Serena, Venus Williams move closer to Australian Open semifinals; Djokovic, Davydenko advance

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Williams sisters move closer to semifinal meeting

MELBOURNE, Australia — Serena and Venus Williams are on track for a sisters semifinal at the Australian Open after fourth round wins.

Venus advanced to the quarterfinals for the seventh time by beating Italy’s Francesca Schiavone 3-6, 6-2, 6-1 in the opening match Monday on Rod Laver Arena.

She’s a win away from a possible showdown with her younger sibling.

Defending champion Serena had a 6-4, 6-2 win over Australia’s Sam Stosur.

Serena, who has won the Australian each odd-numbered year since defeating Venus in the 2003 final, conceded only seven points on serve in the match, including one double-fault in the second set.

“I can’t believe it — Sam beat me last time pretty convincingly, so I knew I had to do real good,” Serena Williams said. “I think my serve was pretty good today.”

Stosur, seeded 13th, beat Williams in their last match and had match points before losing the match prior to that. On Monday, she didn’t get close, and was the last Australian eliminated from the women’s draw.

There’s two Chinese women into the quarterfinals, for the first time ever at a Grand Slam tournament.

Li upset No. 4-seeded Caroline Wozniacki 6-4, 6-3 in a 98-minute match featuring 12 service breaks to join Zheng Jie, the 2008 Wimbledon semifinalist, in the last eight. Zheng is on the other half of the draw.

“Nothing better,” Li said, smiling, “Yeah, I mean good for us.”

In men’s fourth-round matches, 2008 champion Novak Djokovic beat Poland’s Lukasz Kubot 6-1, 6-2, 7-5 to set up a quarterfinal against 2008 runner-up Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who held off Spain’s Nicolas Almagro 6-3, 6-4, 4-6, 6-7 (6), 9-7. It was No. 10-seeded Tsonga’s first five-set match in 11 Grand Slam tournaments.

No. 6 Nikolay Davydenko held off 2009 semifinalist Fernando Verdasco 6-2, 7-5, 4-6, 6-7 (5), 6-3 to extend his winning streak to 13.

Davydenko was only two points from finishing off Verdasco in four sets but the Spaniard rallied to win the last four points of the tiebreaker and force a fifth.

Davydenko fended off three break points and held to open the fifth set, then broke 9th-seeded Verdasco’s serve in a crucial sixth game. He finished it off in just under four hours.

Verdasco lost to eventual champion Rafael Nadal in the semifinals here last year in the longest match in the tournament’s history. He didn’t help himself against Davydenko, with 20 double-faults and 81 unforced errors.

Davydenko has beaten both No. 1 Roger Federer and No. 2 Nadal in runs to his last two titles and it has certainly helped his profile. He got onto the center court before the quarterfinals, and figured it was his first win on the main court at Melbourne Park.

“I just read last year I am ice man, now I am very hot,” the 28-year-old Davydenko, who has never reached the final of a major, said of his recent surge.

Federer was playing on Rod Laver Arena Monday night against Australia’s Lleyton Hewitt. Federer has reached the semifinals or better here every year since winning the 2004 title.

Li already has reached the quarterfinals at Wimbledon and went out at that stage in the last U.S. Open. She beat Williams in the quarterfinals at the Beijing Olympics in their only previous meeting, but she wasn’t drawing too much from that.

“It was good experience for me, for my tennis, also,” Li said. “But I just want to forget, because I will play her again. So I didn’t want always think about the last match. I want to look forward.”

Williams has won seven singles majors and reached the final of the Australian Open in ‘03, losing to her younger sister Serena, in her best run at Melbourne Park.

She struggled to hold serve in the first set against Schiavone but was in command by the end, when she won the last six games after the 29-year-old broke her to open the third set.

“Francesca was playing so well, she was so tenacious, she has so much speed,” Williams said. “I had a little bit of a slow start.”

The Williams wins extended a streak in which at least one American woman has reached the Australian Open quarterfinals every year since 1977.

On Sunday night, American Andy Roddick got a crucial call in his favor in a fourth-round win over Fernando Gonzalez.

Roddick beat the 2007 Australian Open finalist 6-3, 3-6, 4-6, 7-5, 6-2 to set up a quarterfinal against No. 14 Marin Cilic of Croatia, who ousted U.S. Open champion Juan Martin del Potro in five sets.

Roddick bucked the trend on a day of upsets that also resulted in fourth-round exits for two of the top women: No. 2 Dinara Safina, last year’s runner-up, and No. 3 Svetlana Kuznetsova, the reigning French Open champion.

“I got a little lucky, but sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good,” he said.

Seventh-seeded Roddick hit a contentious, dipping forehand to close the fourth set on his fifth set point.

The ball was called out and Gonzalez didn’t take a swing. Roddick challenged the call immediately, winning it and leveling the match at 2-all.

Gonzalez argued that he could have had a play on the ball but chair umpire Enric Molina declined to replay the point.

The episode had a similar feel to the end of Roddick’s second-round win over Brazilian Thomasz Bellucci, when he angrily objected to a decision that went against him on a match point.

“I know he was pretty upset about the challenge and that rule no one seems to know about,” Roddick said of Gonzalez. “I can certainly sympathize with his frustrations.”

Nadal advanced to a quarterfinal against No. 5 Andy Murray by beating Ivo Karlovic 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4. Murray beat American John Isner 7-6 (4), 6-3, 6-2.