Serena Williams advances to Australian Open semifinals
MELBOURNE — Second seed Serena Williams is into her10th consecutive Grand Slam semifinal after a 6-2, 6-3 quarterfinal win over ninth-seeded Johanna Konta of Great Britain at the Australian Open on Wednesday.
In a nod to experience, three of the four women’s semifinalists are part of the over-30 crowd: 36-year-old Venus Williams, 35-year-old Serena Williams, and 34-year-old Mirjana Lucic-Baroni.
Only unseeded Coco Vandeweghe, an upstart at age 25, keeps the semis from being an entirely over-30 affair.
Now that the Williams sisters have both journeyed to the semifinals it marks the first time in the Open Era that two players aged 35-or-over have reached a semifinal at the same Grand Slam.
Williams won nine of her 22 Grand Slam titles – a record number of overall Grand Slam Open Era titles she shares with Steffi Graf – since she turned 30 years old.
“It’s really amazing,” Williams said on court. “Thirty is the new 10. I’m so proud of Mirjana. We played over a decade ago and now will play again.
“No matter what happens someone 34-or-older will be in the final and that’s just great.”
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Williams holds a 2-0 winning record over the 79th-ranked Lucic-Baroni, but both of those encounters took place way back in…
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