Williams Steps Up Her Game

For half an hour, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario of Spain was thoroughly dominant, running her opponent around the court at will.

That opponent was 18-year-old Venus Williams.

If Andre Agassi can start hitting bizarre moonballs, then Sanchez Vicario could turn into a terminator at this weird and wacky U.S. Open. All sorts of strange things have been happening here, and it was no different on this chilly, windy and wet Wednesday in New York.

Role reversal had a time limit. One set was played and the fourth-seeded Sanchez Vicario reverted to a steady retriever, and the fifth-seeded Williams pumped up the volume and her groundstrokes, winning the quarterfinal match, 2-6, 6-1, 6-1, in 1 hour 40 minutes.

“You know you’re going to have to hit a couple of balls, a plethora of balls,” Williams said of playing the French Open champion. “You have to make sure you are patient and ready to stay out there no matter what happens. She played well. It wasn’t like she played badly. It wasn’t as though I ran through her.”

Williams figured out she needed to change her game plan in the final two sets and attacked more short balls.

“In the past, I didn’t have any dedication to coming to the net,” she said. “Maybe I just made camp on the baseline. Recently I broke camp because I saw a lot of the shorter players were serving and volleying.

“Serena made up her mind to serve and volley. Just to get in there more. So that’s what I have to do.”

Williams, a finalist last year in her Open debut, will play second-seeded Lindsay Davenport of Newport Beach in the semifinals. Davenport managed to survive some strange circumstances herself--three rain delays in the opening set and frequent gusts of wind. Despite an ailing right elbow, Davenport defeated 13th-seeded Amanda Coetzer of South Africa, 6-0, 6-4.

The usually steady Coetzer committed 38 unforced errors, and the biggest problem Davenport encountered was when she tried to close out the match. She needed five match points and finally advanced when Coetzer hit a forehand long.

“It was a little tough stopping and starting, stopping and starting again,” Davenport said. “If anything, it’s pretty much made me concentrate on just making first serves, not going for it too much.”

Coetzer, who is generously listed at 5 feet 2 inches in the WTA media guide, looked minute compared with the 6-2 Davenport.

Said Coetzer: “Not so much the size, but the way she hits the ball is intimidating. She hits really hard and deep. Points are over pretty quickly. You often feel like you don’t really have a say in what’s going to happen at the end of the point.”

Davenport has a shot at becoming No. 1 if she wins the U.S. Open, possibly supplanting No. 1 Martina Hingis. But if Hingis, who will play Jana Novotna in the other semifinal, reaches the final, the Swiss teenager will retain her No. 1 ranking.

Davenport has had the most consistent summer, winning three of her last four tournaments. Her Grand Slam record has been impressive too, with her reaching the semifinals of four of the last five Slam events.

Her first Grand Slam semifinal was at the 1997 U.S. Open when she upset Novotna in the quarterfinals, coming back from match point down. The windy conditions on Wednesday reminded Davenport of that match.

“Well, I’m telling you, I woke up this morning, I had nightmares of my match with Novotna last year,” she said. “I won 7-6 in the third. The tennis was not very good.”

During the rain delays, Davenport put heat on her elbow and afterward put ice on it immediately. Her coach, Robert Van’t Hof, said the elbow has been better the last two days, and by taking something off her first serve, the pain subsided.

“The more time I’m out there on the court right now, it would hurt me,” said Davenport, who has not dropped a set in five matches. “For me, this is what I needed to do, win my matches quickly, get out of there and concentrate on the next match.”

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SAMPRAS SWEEPS KUCERA: C9

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