Serena Williams vs. Nicole Gibbs: Score and Reaction from 2017 Australian Open

Despite her best ever performance at a grand slam, Duan leaves Melbourne after a disappointing 6-1, 6-0 round three loss where nerves and inconsistency gave the world No. 17 a comfortable progression to the fourth round in 59 minutes.

“She had a really good tournament that year”.

Gibbs, 23, was only 2 years old when Williams entered her first WTA event, in 1995 at Quebec City.

Venus Williams is shown in action against Stefanie Voegele at the Australian Open.

Defending champion and No. 1-ranked Angelique Kerber was playing CoCo Vandeweghe in the last night match.

@cummingsgoings said: “Tomorrow is Obama’s last day as POTUS and Venus Williams was just called a gorilla by an ESPN commentator”.

Pavlyuchenkova has dropped just one set this tournament and is fresh off a match in which she had 21 winners and was dominant with her first serve.

“It was an wonderful match, an wonderful fight”, Makarova said.

As such, a potential ninth showdown in a grand slam final, and second at Melbourne Park, between the American sisters could potentially be on the cards, though Venus sidestepped the question after her victory over Barthel.

“I want to enjoy this win today because it is my first against Dominika and she is a great player”.

The American will need to serve well in this contest and her heavy groundstrokes should pose a problem for Strycova to deal with. “I mean, definitely I was not the freshest, but still, I was OK”, Kuznetsova said.

Williams despatched Duan in 59 minutes and will play world number 181 Mona Barthel of Germany in the fourth round. “But I lost two times in three sets, and I knew that it would be tough match, tough battle. That’s what I focus on”, said Williams, who hasn’t shied away from addressing issues ranging from racism to gender pay equity throughout her career.

Before this year, the 34-year-old Lucic-Baroni’s only previous win at the Australian Open came back in 1998. Williams once again played at a high-level defeating Safarova, 6-3, 6-4 to reach the third round.

The Russian was defending a proud record of having made the fourth round every year since 2011.

“We played [in the] fourth round past year, and we had an incredibly close one, ” Konta said.