Venus Williams, ranked #17 and in her 16th Australian Open, played a solid, controlled match on Rod Laver Arena against Switzerland’s Stefanie Voegele, winning 6/3 6/2.
After 22 years on tour (whoa!), 7 Grand Slam titles and too many match wins to remember, it’s to be expected that Williams knows how to play rank-and-file players. Still, given the fact that she has Sjogren’s Syndrome – however well she manages it – and is 35 years old, there have been days in the last few years when her experience hasn’t been enough to grab the W against otherwise lesser players. To her advantage, it was 20º at the start of her match, far less than yesterday’s oppressive 35º.
Voegele, ranked 112, won the toss and elected to serve. While it might be a good idea to serve first against Williams, hoping she won’t have settled in yet, that didn’t turn out to be the case. Williams, who made her way to the net on the very first point, broke right away.
After holding serve assertively, the American gained the insurance break to go ahead 3/0, thanks in part to a double fault by Voegele at ad in.
With a career high ranking of 42 in her cv, Voegele knows how to compete and win; as it is she’d already played 3 three set qualifying matches to get into the main draw, where she’d beaten 77th ranked Kurumi Nara of Japan. She earned back one break from Williams, but the all-time great rode out the one break she still had to take the first set.
The dominant theme of the first set, Venus’ being simply too potent for the 26 year old Swiss player, continued in the second. Williams tightened up her game, and dialed up her aggressiveness. For the most part she controlled the center of the court, hitting howitzer groundies, running Voegele left and right, and closing out the net whenever possible. Williams broke Voegele to go up 1/3, and held for 4/1. Although the native of Biel, Switzerland held her serve for 2/4, Venus confidently powered her way through her 4/2 service game for 5/2, and broke Voegele one last time for game, set, match.
In her on-court interview after the 80 minute match, Williams commented about how much she loves being out on court and being in front of the crowds. In the next round she meets either Vavara Lepchenko or Ying Ying Duan.
