It didn't take long for Serena Williams to get her game back on the hardcourts at Stanford. Playing here for the first time, Williams was nearly upset in the first round by Michelle Larcher de Brito, being down 64 20 and rallying back to win in three sets, but on Friday, she completely demolished Patty Schnyder in straight sets, 63 61, to reach the semifinals at The Bank of the West Classic.
Williams, seeded first here and ranked fifth in the world, needed just 54 minutes to defeat the Swiss, her eighth win out of eleven. Schnyder is 2-0 in head-to-head against Williams on her favorite surface, clay, but Williams in 8-1 in all surfaces combined.
The American No. 1 will next face the Canadian No. 1 Aleksandra Wozniak, after she won to Samantha Stosur in the quarterfinals. Wozniak defeated Stosur in the qualifying rounds, but Samantha came back as a lucky loser, and again was defeated, but this time it was more of a fight.
The second semifinal will be between Marion Bartoli, who stunned No. 2 seed Anna Chakvetadze in a easy two-setter, 63 64, and Ai Sugiyama, who won an all-unseeded battle against Dominika Cibulkova in a three set thriller, 67(4) 76(5) 53 ret. For two hours and 44 minutes, the battle between the two was continuing, and despite Cibulkova having a 5-2 lead in the second set, and having three match points at 5-4, and a 2-0 third set lead, Sugiyama didn't give up. Instead she took full control, and when leading 5-3 in the third, Cibulkova had to retire after having a left leg cramp.
Bartoli has gone this deep twice at Tier II events already this season, recording semifinal finishes at Paris [Indoors] in February (falling to Chakvetadze) and Eastbourne in June (falling to Agnieszka Radwanska). Sugiyama's best result of the season prior to this week was a quarterfinal finish at the Tier III tournament in Strasbourg the week before the French Open; she hasn't been to the semifinals of any event since October 2006 in Seoul, eventually finishing runner-up.
While Bartoli has gone deeper in draws over the last few years, Sugiyama does hold a perfect 5-0 record in the pair's head-to-head. The first four of those wins came when the Frenchwoman wasn't even ranked in the Top 50, however, and in their last duel - at Zürich in October 2006 - she pushed Sugiyama to three sets.
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