In the second of the Ladies Fourth round Singles matches at the US Open Tennis Championships today, it was the battle of the 6′ 1″, fast serving, hard hitting players – Venus Williams of America and Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic.

At 36 years old, Williams has been playing some incredible tennis and quickly raced to a 5-1 lead in the first set. It seemed as though it was going to be her day – she looked focused and had a plan – but then, something happened……a lapse in concentration and in crept the unforced errors which allowed the 24 year old Czech to break back and soon, Venus was on the back foot. Pliskova then served to level the game at 5-5 but instead handed Williams the set with a backhand error.

The second set went according to serve until Williams broke Pliskova in the fourth game to lead 3-1. Pliskova then seemed to find her rhythm and with more unforced errors off the Williams racquet, won the next four games before closing off the set with an ace.

Enter the third set and the home crowd on Ashe was doing their best to urge Williams on, so when Pliskova broke the Williams serve in the third game, one could literally hear a pin drop. Pliskova then edged ahead but Williams fought back to level the scores. With the score on 5-5 and Williams serving, fortune favoured the brave and in this case it was Pliskova’s turn, when she returned a shot, which clipped the net and went over Williams’ head. Pliskova, serving for the set and match, soon found herself 40-0 up, but Venus wasn’t going away and broke back to force a tie-breaker.

Unfortunately for the American, it was one step too far as Pliskova advanced to her first quarter-final appearance in a Grand Slam tournament. The final score was 4-6 6-4 7-6(7).

Her quarter-final opponent will either be Agnieszka Radwanska or Ana Konjuh.