Serena sails into fourth round with Russian rout

Serena Williams dispatched of Daria Kasatkina in 44 minutes in a 6-1, 6-1 whitewashing to win her 10th consecutive match at the Australian Open.

She has, after all, won more matches, 70, in this tournament than any other player, having lost only nine matches when she went on to court in the third round against the world No69 Daria Kasatkina.

She broke Allertova in the very first game and then again in the seventh, before clinching the first set with an ace in 29 minutes.

“There’s tension”, she said.

Reminiscent in looks to a young Monica Seles, Bencic plays more like Martina Hingis, not surprising considering that Hingis’s mother, Melanie Molitor, is still one of her coaches and that Hingis is something of a mentor.

Of course, as the tournament progresses she’ll face much sterner challenges than she did here, with Margarita Gasparyan looking to provide that in the next round. “It was hard to play every point the way I wanted”, Allertova said.

Konta’s third-round meeting on Saturday with the Czech Republic’s Denisa Allertova, who beat Sabine Lisicki 6-3, 2-6, 6-4, will be an opportunity to assess how far she has come since last summer.

Serena Williams said on Friday she was trying to bring pop culture to the tennis courts with the self-designed canary yellow crop top outfit she is wearing at the Australian Open.

And Roberta Vinci was knocked out by Germany’s Anna-Lena Friedsam in three sets, meaning there will be no rematch of last year’s US Open semi-final when she halted Williams’ bid for a calendar-year Grand Slam.

Beyond the fourth round here, there is the prospect of playing either the No12 seed, Belinda Bencic, or her oldest adversary, Maria Sharapova, in the quarters, and she would surely welcome either of those.

Williams recalled how she’d partnered Hewitt in the mixed doubles in Melbourne back in 1998 and had admired the South Australian ever since.

Kyrgios, who has already been in the headlines for the wrong reasons at the tournament after he was fined for uttering an audible obscenity during his first round victory against Spain’s Pablo Carreno Busta, aimed a foul-mouth tirade at umpire James Keothavong in the third set, claiming he was being distracted by music being played in the stands. He has beaten the Portuguese in all six matches they have played and has only dropped one set to the baseliner, at the French Open a year ago.

Former U.S. Open champion Marin Cilic was the one major casualty of the day in the men’s draw, going down 6-4 7-6(5) 7-5 to Roberto Bautista Agut. Teenager or not, this is the kind of form that compels notice at Grand Slam level, and the seriousness of the Swiss’ major championship credentials is attested to by the fact that she is seeded 12 at the Australian Open.

“I was definitely prepared for a tough match”, Konta said.