{"id":30175,"date":"2021-02-03T12:28:05","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T13:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=30175"},"modified":"2021-02-03T15:03:25","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T15:03:25","slug":"red-hot-williams-continues-on-barty-collision-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=30175","title":{"rendered":"Red-hot Williams continues on Barty collision course"},"content":{"rendered":"

It's a rare thing for Serena Williams<\/a> to play a tournament the week leading into one of the tennis Grand Slams.<\/p>\n

Now that she's at Melbourne Park, she's making the most of the Yarra Valley Classic to prepare for next week's Australian Open<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>MORE: <\/strong>Barty advances after speed wobbles<\/a><\/p>\n

The 23-time major champion beat Tsvetana Pironkova 6-1, 6-4 on Wednesday to advance to the quarterfinals. She's still on track for a semifinal match against top-ranked Ash Barty.<\/p>\n

Williams had a tough win over Pironkova in last year's U.S. Open quarterfinals, and then withdrew from their scheduled second-round match at the French Open because of an Achilles injury.<\/p>\n

That injury kept Williams out of competitive tennis until last week. She played her opening matches in Australia in a long-sleeve top.<\/p>\n

\"Serena<\/p>\n

But it was warmer Wednesday, and Williams came out hot. She won the first set in 28 minutes and made Pironkova struggle for almost every point. The Bulgarian rallied in the second set and saved three match points before Williams finished it off with a powerful service return forcing an error.<\/p>\n

Williams was later asked when was the last time she played a warm-up tournament so close to a major.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Open, last year, was her short answer. Then she elaborated.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut before that, before this whole pandemic, I could count the times on one finger I\u2019ve done that," she said. \u201cI\u2019m just happy to be out here in any circumstances. It\u2019s so cool after what the world went through the last 12 months. Very special to be out here."<\/p>\n

Williams won her last major title at the 2017 Australian Open, when she was pregnant with her daughter, Olympia. She's still chasing Margaret Court's all-time record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles.<\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It's a rare thing for Serena Williams to play a tournament the week leading into one of the tennis Grand Slams. Now that she's at […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30175"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30177,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30175\/revisions\/30177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}