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MELBOURNE, Australia – Sloane Stephens' best Open in Australia in five years ended in a 6-7 (3), 6-3, 6-3 loss to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, not ranked at fourth lap, which lasted two and a half hours and ended at nearly two hours. Monday.
Fifth-seeded Stephens was the 2017 US Open champion and second in the 2018 French Open, but until this year she had won no match in Melbourne Park since 2014, when she also lost in the fourth round.
The American has had all sorts of problems in her service, facing a total of 23 break points and having been broken seven times, including in the last game. Pavlyuchenkova, a Russian ranked 44th, played aggressively and compiled a 46-28 advantage among the winners. In her fifth Grand Slam quarter-final, she will face another un-ranked player, United States Danielle Collins.
Collins, 25, stunned, Angelique Kerber, triple major champion, 6-0, 6-2 in just 56 minutes on Sunday.
Collins was 0-5 in career at the Grand Slam tournaments until this one. But she has now added a surprise of number 2 Kerber to her previous wins against a pair of seeded No. 14 Julia Goerges and No. 19 Carolina Garcia.
Collins was the most aggressive player of all time and finished with a decisive advantage of 29-6 among the winners.
It took four match points and two hours and twenty-two minutes before Barty was pushing the 2008 champion, Sharapova, to reach the quarterfinals of a major for the first time. She is the first Australian since Jelena Dokic to reach the last eight games of the home Grand Slam tournament. No Australian woman has won in 41 years.
"It's incredible that it's happening … in Australia," commented Barty, referring to his first goal in 2019. "I gave myself the opportunity and the opportunity to play in front of the world's best crowd. on one of the best courts in the world and in my house Slam.There is absolutely nothing better. "
Sharapova won the first set but had trouble serving and finished with 10 double faults in the match. After giving up the second set – halfway through Barty's nine-game winning streak – Sharapova took a prolonged break in the locker room and was booed when she returned to court. This is a rarity for the five-time Grand Slam winner in these regions.
Sharapova nearly made a U-turn, recovering 4-0 in the deciding set, forcing Barty to serve him and saving three match points when she did. But Barty held her tight.
The Australian will face two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, who defeated 17-year-old Amanda Anisimova of the United States in two sets in the previous match on the same pitch.
Kvitova, 28, did not want to be part of another defeat against Anisimova, who had beaten her last year at Indian Wells and was the youngest American since Jennifer Capriati in 1993 to surrender as far away as Melbourne Park.
It took him 59 minutes to win 6-2, 6-1. Kvitova was the model of consistency that the other two seeds previously defeated by Anisimova – Lesia Tsurenko (No. 24) and Aryna Sabalenka (No. 11) – were not.
She now has a run of nine straight wins – her four wins here after a title game in Sydney last week – and reaches the quarterfinals of the Australian Open for the first time since 2012.
"When I count the years, it's quite long," Kvitova said. "But, you know, sometimes the wait is worth it, I do not complain at all."
Kvitova has broken Anisimova 's service five times – including the opening match – and has never faced a breaking point. She put 86% of her first services in the game and won all but five points when she did.
"I was going out today as if I had never played it, because I knew she was going out to play it at her best," Anisimova said. "She presented a really solid game plan against me, which even threw me to the ground, because it was different from my other matches."
Associated Press contributed to this report.
