Top seeds Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams played ruthless tennis on Tuesday to crush Spanish opposition and advance with ease at the US Open.
Djokovic hammered Marcel Granollers 6-3, 6-0, 6-0 and booked a place in the quarter-finals, while women’s holder Serena Williams duplicated the last two sets of that scoreline over Carla Suarez Navarro, as the Spaniard celebrated her 25th birthday.
Djokovic, fighting to hold onto his world number one ranking against Rafael Nadal, will face Mikhail Youzhny after the Russian beat 2001 winner Lleyton Hewitt 6-3, 3-6, 6-7 (3-7), 6-4, 7-5 in a four-hour epic.
Djokovic stormed through in less than 90 minutes against Granollers, who was coming off three five-set matches. The Serb top seed reached his 18th straight grand slam quarter-final and has not lost in the fourth round of a major since January, 2007 in Australia.
Djokovic ripped 34 winners to just eight for his Spanish opponent, who lost the first 25 points on Djokovic’s serve.
“I’ve played one of the best matches of my life. I played a flawless tennis”, said the winner.
“This comes at a great time for me. I wanted to be more aggressive as the tournament progressed and to be able to stay committed to play every point, to win every point, regardless of what’s the score.
“I’m very happy with my mental state, how I feel physically, and the way I played.” Youzhny rallied from deficits in the fourth and fifth sets to hold off Hewitt, who suffered a huge disappointment after leading 4-1 in the fourth set.
“It’s obviously disappointing to lose, but I left it all out there. There’s not a whole heap more I could have done. It obviously could have gone either way. There was a lot of momentum changes, yeah, right from the start,” said the Australian, 32.
Hewitt had been seeking his first New York quarter-final since 2006.
In women’s play, second seed Victoria Azarenka needed a wake-up call after sleeping through the opening set to complete her 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 defeat of Serb Ana Ivanovic to reach the quarter-finals.
The postponed Monday match sent the world number two and double Australian Open champion into a match with Slovak Daniela Hantuchova.
The women combined for 17 double-faults but only produced six aces. Azarenka broke nine times while losing her own serve on seven occasions in the momentum-shifting contest.
“Ana came out firing,” said Azarenka, who won her fourth match in a row in the series to now stand 5-2. “She played amazing in the first set; I felt out of place.
“I was sleeping and she was ripping winners, serving great. I had to wake up in the second after the first slipped away. I was more determined and focused on taking my opportunities.” China’s Li Na was made to work as she booked the first of the semi-final spots and became the first Chinese to get this far at Flushing Meadows.
The fifth seed lost a 4-2 lead in the second-set tiebreaker against Ekaterina Makarova before prevailing in their quarter-final 6-4, 6-7 (5-7), 6-2.