Serena Williams grinds out three-set win over Maria Sakkari at U.S. Open

Phew!

You could almost hear the collective exhale from USTA officials Monday after Serena Williams recovered from a break down in the deciding set to defeat Maria Sakkari and advance to the U.S. Open quarterfinals with a 6-3, 6-7 (6), 6-3 victory.

It would have been nothing short of a disaster if the U.S. Open had lost its biggest male and female stars in less than a 24-hour period, if Williams had been sent home the day after Novak Djokovic was defaulted from his fourth-round match for accidentally hitting a line judge with a ball.

The good news is, not only did Williams advance but she is playing the kind of tennis that can give fans hope that this time she finally will win that elusive 24th Grand Slam and tie Margaret Court for most tennis singles majors of any gender.

Sakkari, the tournament’s 15th seed, is a formidable hard-serving opponent who was trying to become the first Greek woman to reach a Grand Slam quarterfinal.

Sakkari defeated Williams less than two week ago, winning a three-set match at the Western & Southern Open, a tune-up tournament usually held in Ohio but moved to Flushing Meadows to become part of the two-tournament bubble tournament that is being held without spectators because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Sakkari played with remarkable composure after losing the first set. She became one of the few players to out-ace Williams, 13 to 12.  She then took charge of the second set tiebreaker by winning the first four points. When Williams brought the tiebreaker back to 6-6, Sakkari refused to get rattled and won the set when Williams knocked a forehand long.

Williams admitted to briefly having a flashback of her early exit in the last tournament at the hands of Sakkari.

“Of course I was thinking about what happened before, but this was a different match and different scenario and different moment,” Williams said in her on-court interview. “I just kept fighting.”

Indeed, it is a different moment. It’s one thing to beat Williams in a tune-up tournament that she doesn’t care that much about, and it’s quite another to try to end what could very well be her best remaining chance to tie Court.

Williams, who turns 39 at the end of this month, has not won a Grand Slam title since she took time off for the birth of her now 3-year-old daughter. Since then, she has made it to the finals of Wimbledon twice and the U.S. Open twice and is 0-4, causing many critics to wonder if she still has what it takes to dominate on the biggest of stages.

With no crowd to pump her up, Williams became her own cheering session, yelling loudly at the sky when she scored a critical point. At the end of the match, Williams turned toward her husband in the stands and screamed. He stood and screamed.

Williams basically saved the U.S. Open this season when she became the first major star to announce that she would come to New York and play in the bubble during the pandemic. Now, she has a chance to provide them with one of the greatest of narratives.

There are some who say there should be an asterisk on the title of anyone who wins here this week, given that the tournament is missing six of the game’s top eight players including last year’s women's winner, Bianca Andreescu.

Yet, if Williams does win, there is another way to look at it. Really, what better story is there than a woman who is so determined to win that elusive title, including bringing her young family to New York and competing in the time of coronavirus?

Williams can’t do anything about the weak women’s field, about the fact that Bulgarian Tsvetana Pironkova, her quarterfinal opponent, is unseeded.

What she can do is keep her cool and resolve and get back to the finals for a third straight year.

By Barbara Barker

barbara.barker@newsday.commeanbarb

Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.