Williams is a 15-time Grand Slam singles champion and was the No. 3 seed and a heavy favorite at the Australian Open. But what made the quarterfinal result all the more unexpected was that she has been as dominant of late as she has been at any time in the past: sweeping to the Wimbledon, Olympic and U.S. Open titles last year, then winning 20 straight matches coming into this quarterfinal.
But the streak and Williams’s newfound tranquility on court came crashing to a halt on this cool, sunlit afternoon in Rod Laver Arena as Williams — frustrated by a back problem and Stephens’s precocious blend of offense and defense — smashed her racket to smithereens early in the third set.
As a result, there will be no rematch between Williams and the world No. 1, Victoria Azarenka, in the semifinals Thursday. Instead it will be Azarenka vs. the 29th-seeded Stephens, who until this trip to Australia had never been past the fourth round in a Grand Slam tournament.
Though Stephens has had other tennis role models, including Kim Clijsters, it was a poster of Williams that once adorned her wall.
“This is so crazy, but oh my goodness,” Stephens said, wiping away tears in her post-match interview. “I think I’ll put a poster of myself now.”
It was the second Grand Slam shock of late for Williams, who was beaten in the first round of the French Open last year by the unseeded Frenchwoman Virginie Razzano. But this was the first time that Williams, the best player of her generation, had been beaten by a younger American in tournament play.
Stephens said she felt good about her chances before the match began.
“Last night I was thinking about it,” she said. “And someone asked me, ‘Do you think you can win?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ But I wasn’t too clear about it, and this morning when I got up I was like, ‘Dude, you can do this. Go out and play and do your best.”’
Though Stephens grew up watching Williams from afar, they met only fairly recently. They were Fed Cup teammates last year and have spent time together in Los Angeles, where Stephens lives with her mother and younger brother and where Williams has a home.
But they will now be rivals as well as teammates, and this defeat came less than a month after they played for the first time. Williams won that match in the quarterfinals in Brisbane, Australia, in straight sets, but Stephens was surprisingly comfortable playing at Williams’s torrid baseline pace, drawing big praise from Williams in the aftermath.
Stephens looked comfortable again Wednesday, handling Williams’s power and holding her first three service games at love before Williams broke her in the eighth game and then, as expected, closed out the opening set.
Williams led 2-0 in the second set, but Stephens then began to lift her game again.
The daughter of the former National Football League running back John Stephens, who is now deceased, Stephens is one of the fastest players in women’s tennis. She tracked down groundstrokes on the run that would have been winners against most other players, and she managed to break Williams’s serve for the first time to get back to two games each.
The match took another turn in the eighth game when Williams shouted in pain as she ran forward and smacked a lunging backhand near the net. Grimacing, she was quickly broken again as Stephens took a 5-3 lead. Williams, limited in her movement, broke back in the next game and then called for a trainer on the changeover, eventually leaving the court for further treatment on her lower back.
“Well, a few days ago, it just got really tight, and I had no rotation on it,” she said. “I just went for this drop shot in the second set, and it just locked up on me. I think I couldn’t really rotate after that.”
Williams’s huge serve was considerably slower after she returned to the court, but she managed to hold at love to 5-all while serving change-ups to a visibly rattled Stephens. But the teenager fought off a break point in the next game with a forehand winner and then broke Williams for the third time in the set to even the match at one set apiece.
Williams began to swing more freely on her serve as the third set began. But with Stephens up 2-1, Williams reared back after failing to break serve and smashed her racket twice on the blue hardcourt with two massive swings, destroying the racket and then flinging it at her bench, earning a code violation for equipment abuse.
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