{"id":23920,"date":"2013-09-02T13:53:58","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T17:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=23920"},"modified":"2013-09-02T13:53:58","modified_gmt":"2013-09-02T17:53:58","slug":"u-s-open-serena-williams-eases-past-sloane-stephens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=23920","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Open: Serena Williams Eases Past Sloane Stephens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No. 1 <strong>Serena Williams<\/strong> sealed her place in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open with a straight-sets victory over Sloane Stephens on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Williams<\/strong>, the grand slam\u2019s defending champion, was given a fright by her fellow American at Flushing Meadows, but her experience and quality shone through in the second set. <strong>Williams<\/strong> emerged a 6-4, 6-1 victor in 89 minutes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Stephens<\/strong> defeated <strong>Williams<\/strong> in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open in January, and they have become rivals as the two best women in American tennis; <strong>Serena<\/strong> the powerful veteran,<strong> Sloane<\/strong> the rising challenger.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Williams<\/strong>, 31, looked to be on her way to the first set when she broke in the sixth game with a forehand winner. However, <strong>Stephens<\/strong>, 20, the world No. 16, refused to lie down and broke back immediately before holding serve to level matters at 4-4.<\/p>\n<p>Still, despite her best efforts, <strong>Stephens<\/strong> was overpowered by <strong>Williams<\/strong>, who clinched the opening set in the 10th game as <strong>Stephens<\/strong> sprayed a forehand wide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No. 1 Serena Williams sealed her place in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open with a straight-sets victory over Sloane Stephens on Sunday. Williams, the grand slam\u2019s defending champion, was given a fright by her fellow American at Flushing Meadows, but her experience and quality shone through in the second set. Williams emerged a 6-4, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}