Miami: World No 1 Serena Williams battled her way into the fourth round of the Sony Open with a 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 win over Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia on Saturday, but the six-time champion hardly looked at home on the Miami hardcourts.
The game’s dominant player, Williams, who lives an hour drive away from the Crandon Park complex, has yet to put her stamp on her home tournament, advancing with a pair of laboured wins over Yaroslava Shvedova and Garcia.
The hard-hitting Frenchwoman showed no fear, slugging it out with the 17-time Grand Slam winner for more than two-and-a-half hours before Williams ended the fight with a blistering forehand winner.
A more unsettling sight for tournament officials has been the large swaths of empty green seats, the hometown girl and the biggest draw in women’s tennis unable to attract a full house to either of Williams’ centre court matches.
Of greater concern to Williams is her serve, which seems to have deserted her, the muscular American unable to find her mark against Garcia while firing seven double faults.
A minority owner in the National Football League Miami Dolphins, a smiling Williams stepped out on to centre court dressed in the orange and turquoise colours of her team, earning the approval of the half-empty stadium.
But the smiles did not last long, a misfiring Williams spending most of the match gesturing, scowling and shouting at herself for a string of miscues.
The contest got off to an uneven start, Williams breaking Garcia three times with the Frenchwoman countering with two breaks of her own. In contrast the rest of the match would produce just two breaks, Garcia breaking Williams to take the second set and the defending champion breaking the Frenchwoman to open the third.
In other action, fifth-seeded German Angelique Kerber raced into the fourth round with a 6-0, 6-2 demolition of Bulgarian Tsvetana Pironkova while ninth seed Sara Errani of Italy was stopped 6-3, 2-6, 6-4 by 23rd-seeded Russian Ekaterina Makarova.
The morning session featured an intriguing clash between 12th-seeded Serb Ana Ivanovic and Italian Flavia Pennetta, who arrived in Miami riding the momentum from a victory at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells.
Ivanovic, a former French Open champion, ended Pennetta’s run with 6-4, 6-3 victory setting up a fourth round meeting with 2011 Wimbledon winner Petra Kvitova, the eighth seed advancing with a no-nonsense 6-3, 6-4 win over Croatian Donna Vekic.
Belgian Kirsten Flipkens moved on to to the fourth round in a walkover when 14th seed Sabine Lisicki withdrew because of flu.
