Serena Williams crashed out of the 2020 Australian Open in a shock third round result, joining Caroline Wozniacki on a day of shocks in the women’s draw.
Wang Qiang had last played Serena at the 2019 US Open and would have not known what hit her, winning just one game in that encounter. The match had lasted 44 minutes.
To then go into this third round match with so much belief that allowed her to defeat the 23-time Grand Slam winner in three sets makes for a story to recall in the years to come. Qiang won 6-4, 6-7, 7-5 to move into the fourth round where she will take on Ons Jabeur.
Jabeur stunned Wozniacki in what was the last match of her career, again needing three sets and 7-5 in the final set to set up a meeting with Qiang in the fourth round.
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Williams questioned her own performance in the match, even calling the number of errors she made in the match as unprofessional. She said:
“Personally I made a lot of errors. I didn’t hit any of those shots in New York or in general in a really long time. So that’s good news. I made far too many errors to be a professional athlete today.”
Serena said Qiang’s service made a lot of difference but also blamed her own returning for the defeat, and said she lost the match rather than the other way around. And she also said it was no fun losing, and that there was no doubt she was gunning for the 24th Grand Slam title.
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On the other hand, an emotional Wozniacki called it quits from the tour after going down to Jabeur, and later said it was only right the match and her career ended with a forehand error. The Dane had decided to end her career at the end of the Australian Open, looking to focus on family.
This is the first time that Jabeur has made it to the fourth round of a Grand Slam and will now take on Qiang. Qiang had only recently played Jabeur at the Shenzhen Open and won it in straight sets, following on from their first meeting at Dubai in 2017 – which she had won too.
Qiang has made a Grand Slam quarterfinal only once before and that came at the US Open last year where Serena had registered a 6-1, 6-0 win over her.
In some of the other results of the day, top seeded Ash Barty defeated Elena Rybakina 6-3, 6-2, Petra Kvitova routed Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-1, 6-2, while Maria Sakkari upset Madison Keys 6-4, 6-4.
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