Ekaterina Makarova

Ekaterina Makarova

"DISASTROUS" was how Serena Williams described her performance against lowly ranked Russian Ekaterina Makarova, who sent the five-time champion packing at the Australian Open yesterday.

Williams served up seven double faults and hit 37 unforced errors to make a shock fourth-round exit.
"I served horrendous," she said.
"It was just disastrous, really. She played really well and she deserved the win. I know that I can play a hundred times better than I did this whole tournament."
Williams did not move as well as usual around the court against Makarova and the Russian made her pay, sealing a 6-2 6-3 victory.
Williams was reluctant to blame the ankle injury she suffered in Brisbane.
"I honestly think it was on my racquet - I hit a lot of errors, she hit some great shots down the line. But every ball that came, I just hit it as far out as I could," she said.

"Obviously I'm not 100 per cent, and I haven't been, but it's no excuse."
At No.56 in the world, Makarova is only the eighth-best woman in Russia on rankings.
But that has counted for little as she has swept aside 25th-seeded Brisbane International champion Kaia Kanepi and No.7 seed Vera Zvonareva.
Post-match, it was almost as though she could not believe the upset she had pulled off against Williams.
"I won against Serena - that's amazing," she said after reaching her first grand slam quarter-final.
"I played her in Beijing and I was really afraid because she's a great player and it's really tough to play against her. But this time, I don't know, I felt so comfortable. I really thought I could beat her. Maybe in my head, that helped me."
Meanwhile, Martina Navratilova has tipped Petra Kvitova as the next big star of women's tennis, saying Caroline Wozniacki doesn't cut it.
The 18-time grand slam champion took a swing at the Dane yesterday.
"Clearly nobody feels that Wozniacki is a true No.1," Navratilova said.
"If we still had the same ranking system we were using six years ago, when they were giving bonus points for beating players, Kvitova would have ended up No.1 because she had beaten more top players than Wozniacki.
"Wozniacki doesn't even have that great of a record in her career or the last four years over the top 10 or against the top five, whereas Petra, you feel really imposes herself on the match and any player."
Asked whether Wozniacki deserved to be No.1, Navratilova said: "It's not about deserve. She's No.1 because that's how they set up the computer ranking."
Navratilova wants a weighting to reward players for beating higher-ranked opponents.
She said that Wozniacki had not won a slam title was "irrelevant".
"I think if you won 15 tournaments and not slams, you're No.1 because you have the best record," she said.

Ekaterina Makarova