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 Thrashing Hingis dominates Serena Williams in Rome
Posted: Friday May 07, 1999 04:40 PM
ROME (AP) -- Martina Hingis taught Serena Williams a simple truth of clay-court tennis Friday: patience is a virtue. The Italian Open's defending champion and top seed dominated the rushing Williams from the start and routed the American, 6-2, 6-2, to set up a semifinal clash with Serena's sister, Venus. Hingis reeled off 16 of her quarterfinal match's first 17 points and gained a measure of revenge for her loss in the players' prior meeting, on a hard court at the Lipton Championships in March. "I just didn't miss. I was very focused, and didn't let her back in the game," Hingis said. "And I just didn't give her the chance to kill me. I guess I made her kill herself." Venus Williams, seeded third her, progressed with a 7-6 (7-1), 6-2 win under the lights against No. 11 Dominique Van Roost. The Belgian suffered a right groin strain early in the second set and could not keep up with Williams thereafter. Hingis and Venus Williams have been the tour's top two players this season, each with three titles. "Another Williams is on the way," Hingis said. "Beating the whole family all the time is not easy. They're very powerful, the best out there." She has a 6-2 career record against Venus, and has won both of their encounters on clay, including last year's Rome final. Mary Pierce, the 1997 Italian Open champion, and fellow Frenchwoman Amelie Mauresmo, a surprise finalist at the Australian Open, also won Friday and will meet in Saturday's other semifinal. Willams family pride will be on the line against Hingis. "We have a saying: If I can't do it for myself, I'll do it for [my sister]," Venus said. Serena has been on a roll in 1999, winning her first two career titles, and had dropped just eight games in two matches here. But the sixth seed got into trouble Friday by trying to force the action, compiling more than two dozen unforced errors in the 62-minute encounter. "I didn't make any shots out there. You could probably count the number of shots I made -- two or three," Williams said. "She didn't really win. I gave it to her. I made so many errors, it was really, absolutely absurd." Hingis' accuracy didn't help, though. Already a five-time Grand Slam tournament champion at the age of 18, the strategic Swiss star kept Williams off-balance with deep shots to the corners. Serena, whose game is based primarily on power, realizes she needs to adapt better to slow clay. "It's important to keep the ball in play more," she said. "You need to set the point up and then go for the winner, not go for the winner right away. I'll try to do that next time." She doesn't have a lot of time to straighten things out ahead of the French Open, the lone Grand Slam event played on clay. It starts May 24. Venus said she understood her sibling's mistake. "I guess she got a little bit confused," Venus said. "It's happened to me before in an important match, where I went for too much and then I went for too little. I've been to both extremes." On the other side of the draw, the 10th-seeded Mauresmo ended Sylvia Plischke's string of upsets with a 6-2, 6-3 win over unseeded Austrian. Plischke had beaten French Open titlist Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario and 12th seed Amanda Coetzer. Pierce, seeded fourth, beat another French player, No. 8 Sandrine Testud, 6-4, 7-5.
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