Serena Williams beat sister Venus in straight sets to win her seventh Australian Open and an Open-era record 23rd Grand Slam singles title.<\/p>\n
Serena, 35, won 6-4 6-4 to pass Steffi Graf in the all-time list of major winners since the Grand Slams accepted professional players in 1968.<\/p>\n
The American regains the number one ranking from German Angelique Kerber.<\/p>\n
Australia’s Margaret Court is the only player still ahead of Serena in terms of Grand Slam singles titles on 24.<\/p>\n
Serena Williams went into the match as a strong favourite, but the tension was apparent as early as the third game when she smashed a racquet in frustration, picking up a code violation.<\/p>\n
She had broken serve in the first and third games only to hand the advantage straight back each time, three double faults inexplicably littering a desperate game for 2-2.<\/p>\n
It was clear that the six-time champion was struggling to settle, with 13 unforced errors in the opening five games, while elder sister Venus kept her under pressure with some deep hitting.<\/p>\n
The decisive move of the set came with a superb drop volley followed by a thumping forehand winner from Serena to break for 4-3, and this time she managed to consolidate on serve.<\/p>\n
In contrast to the opening stages, the following nine games went with serve – Venus recovering superbly from 0-40 early in the second set – but it was Serena who was creating the chances.<\/p>\n
She finally capitalised on her sixth break point of the set with a brilliant return winner to lead 4-3 and followed it up with her best service game of the match for 5-3.<\/p>\n
The crowd on Rod Laver Arena had been backing Venus from the beginning as she tried to win a first major title for eight years, and all the more so as defeat loomed and she appeared to struggle physically.<\/p>\n
There was a huge cheer when she held serve to force her sister to serve out the match, but Serena recovered from 15-30 to earn match point and fell back on the court in celebration as her sister sent the ball floating wide.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Serena Williams beat sister Venus in straight sets to win her seventh Australian Open and an Open-era record 23rd Grand Slam singles title. Serena, 35, won 6-4 6-4 to pass Steffi Graf in the all-time list of major winners since the Grand Slams accepted professional players in 1968. The American regains the number one ranking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":289027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[249],"tags":[3528,3529,3530],"class_list":["post-289024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other-sports","tag-australia-open","tag-serena-williams","tag-venus-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=289024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=289024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=289024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=289024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}