Australian Open - - Serena Williams Advances to Fourth Round With Crushing Victory Over Spain's Carla Suarez Navarro

Serena Williams had insisted that she did not want Carla Suarez Navarro to get in the habit of beating members of her family at this time of year, and Saturday, under clearing Melbourne skies, she ensured that nothing of that sort would happen again by defeating the Spaniard 6-0, 6-3.

Twelve months ago, Suarez Navarro had caused one of the major upsets of last year’s Australian Open by beating Venus Williams. “I think, maybe, Serena hits the ball even harder,” she had told me. “But I will do my best.”

Well, Carla, who is 5-foot-4 if she stands up very straight, did not have to wait long to discover just what kind of power the younger Williams sister can generate. The score was 5-0 before she could blink. But then, to her credit, she started chasing everything in sight and proceeded to save no less than seven set points in the sixth game of that opening set.

Time and again, Serena would get herself in a winning position only to be foiled by one more Spanish return and, at one stage, having fluffed another awkward volley, she fell back onto the court and sat there, contemplating the frustrations of the game.

Having finally clinched it, Williams broke quickly at the start of the second and was never really in trouble again. A sister’s revenge was complete.

Meanwhile, another Spaniard was getting a tennis lesson at Rod Laver Arena. Albert Montanes may feel 32 is a little old to be getting a lesson, especially as he was competing in his 33rd Grand Slam, but the master was on the other side of the net and all he could do was try to offer Roger Federer as much opposition as possible.

The man from Barcelona didn’t disgrace himself. There were a few nice rallies and he served well enough. But the score was as inevitable as it was predictable — 6-3, 6-4, 6-4.

Gisela Dulko, the Argentine who had played so well to defeat Ana Ivanovic in the previous round, ran into a much sharper opponent in the ninth-seeded Russian Vera Zvonareva and went down 6-1, 7-5 at Margaret Court Arena while the increasingly impressive world No. 7 — Victoria Azarenka from Belarus — destroyed the Italian Tathiana Garbin 6-0, 6-2.

In the opening match of the day, Samantha Stosur gave the Aussie crowd plenty to cheer about as she moved impressively into round four with a 6-4, 6-1 defeat of the 73rd-ranked Italian Alberta Brianti. That sets up a match against Serena for Stosur who beat the world No. 1 in Los Angeles last year, just a few weeks after reaching the semifinal of the French Open.

“Knowing I’m going to be up against a great champion may take a little bit of the pressure off,” said Stosur. “I guess I really don’t have that much to lose. I know I’ve got the game that can beat her because I’ve done it before. So I can go into the match knowing that and really believing in myself.”