March 26th, 2007
Posted by: Marco
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Maria Sharapova rallied to avenge a Wimbledon defeat with a three-set victory over Venus Williams, but she had to wait another day to see if she'll get a similar chance against Serena Williams.
Top-seeded Sharapova beat Venus Williams 2-6, 6-2, 7-5 to reach the fourth round of the 6.9 million-dollar WTA and ATP Masters Series tournament here.
Sharapova, who lost to Venus Williams in their last meeting - in the 2005 Wimbledon semi-finals - emerged with the victory in a hard-fought match yesterday in which the windy conditions contributed to the 50 unforced errors and 12 double faults by Williams and 35 unforced errors and 13 double faults by Sharapova.
After going up 2-0 in the opening set Sharapova surrendered the next six games. She responded in kind in the second set to force the decider, which ended when Williams fired long.
Sharapova was next due to face either Australian Open champion Serena Williams or Czech Lucie Safarova.
But the scheduled night match between 13th-seeded Serena and Safarova was postponed until today when rain that has plagued the tournament struck again, leaving Sharapova to wait and see if she'll get a chance to avenge her Australian open finals rout.
Sharapova was joined in the fourth round by second-seeded Belgian Justine Henin, No. 3 Svetlana Kuznetsova and No. 4 Kim Clijsters of belgium, while fifth-seeded Swiss Martina Hingis exited in the third round for the second straight year.
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