Seesaw works for both sisters

NEW YORK -- The Williams sisters, both playing seeded opponents, marched into the fourth round of the U.S. Open Friday with chins in different positions.

Reigning Wimbledon champion Venus, chin up, looked crisp and unbeatable in her 6-1, 6-2 lashing of No. 21 Alona Bondarenko of Ukraine in the first match of the evening session on Arthur Ashe center court.

A smiling, charged-up Venus told the stadium crowd afterward, “I want to take my experience from Wimbledon and bring it here.”

Reigning Australian Open champion Serena, jaw set and chin somewhat down, looked beatable as she struggled through a 6-4, 7-6 (4) confrontation with No. 27 Vera Zvonareva of Russia in the match immediately preceding her sister’s.

A more serious Serena told the media afterward that she was angry at different points of the match -- presumably at herself -- and also said, “I didn’t feel I played the greatest at all.”

Unlike Venus, who appears to be upbeat and on a roll, Serena has struggled since winning at the Australian and at a Tier I event at Miami. She hurt her thumb at Wimbledon and didn’t play at all during the summer series of hard-court events leading up to the Open. Serena is seeded eighth, Venus 12th and the draw has them set up for a possible semifinal meeting.

“We’re a couple of rounds away,” Venus said. “I think as long as we keep playing, stay determined, it can happen. That would be nice for us, for both of us, to get as far as we can, one of us to be in the final.”

Venus, who overwhelmed Bondarenko with 30 winners in 15 games, will play No. 5 Ana Ivanovic of Serbia next. Serena, who had 35 unforced errors, four more than Zvonareva, will next play the woman her sister beat in the Wimbledon final, No. 10 Marion Bartoli of France.

The women’s top-seeded player, Justine Henin, continued quietly through the bracket, beating Ekaterina Makarova of Russia, 6-0, 6-2, in 50 minutes. Henin has lost a total of nine games in her first three matches.

Henin’s match, and the combined matches of the Williams’ sisters, lasted, in total, almost exactly one hour less than the one played on the Louis Armstrong court between the marathon men, Radek Stepanek of the Czech Republic and Novak Djokovic of Serbia.

Like two heavyweight boxers going toe-to-toe, they battled for 4 hours 44 minutes, and Djokovic finally prevailed in a final-set tiebreaker when Stepanek caught him in midcourt on match point, and the Serb still managed to block back a half-volley into an open court. The score resembled a calculus equation: 6-7 (4), 7-6 (5), 5-7, 7-5, 7-6 (2).

Stepanek, who beat James Blake to win this year’s Los Angeles Countrywide Classic at UCLA, stepped over the net to congratulate Djokovic and the two exhausted players hugged while holding each other up.

Djokovic is No. 3 in the world, and a win by unseeded Stepanek would have been a huge upset. Nobody knew that better than the likable Serb.

“I have to say that I am very proud of myself today,” he said, “because I don’t know how I managed to win.”

Stepanek, who said he had never been through a match like that and called the crowd amazing, also felt good about himself afterward.

“Novak was the luckier one today,” he said, “But I can be proud of what I did on the court.”

In other men’s matches, Mardy Fish of the U.S. lost an opportunity when he had a 4-1 lead in the fifth set against eighth-seeded Tommy Robredo of Spain and dropped the next five games.

No. 12 Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia, who lost early last year here, advanced into the third round by beating Andrei Pavel of Romania in straight sets. Two seeded Russians, Mikhail Youzhny and Marat Safin -- a former champion -- were upset victims, Safin in a surprising 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 rout by unseeded and No. 55 ranked Swiss player Stan Wawrinka.

In the night session, No. 2 Rafael Nadal, whose condition was suspect going into the match against Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia, got through when the Serb had to retire with a rib injury with Nadal leading, 6-2, 6-3, 3-2. Nadal said his sore knees were “a little bit better.”

--

bill.dwyre@latimes.com