MELBOURNE, Australia — Serena Williams has created intergenerational battles through her own longevity and her own brilliance.
At 33, Williams plays opponents who are nearly all from the younger set. Many of them watched her on television when they were trying to decide whether they preferred to hit tennis balls seriously or shoot basketballs instead.
Garbiñe Muguruza, the daughter of a Venezuelan mother and a Spanish father, was one of those who chose tennis balls, and she has learned to hit them with devastating effect.
Last year at the French Open, she went on a tear in the second round, defeating Williams, 6-2, 6-2.
On Monday at the Australian Open, with planes buzzing over Rod Laver Arena for Australia Day, Muguruza picked up right where she had left off, winning the first set of her fourth-round match against Williams, 6-2.
I think for once, I didn’t start out slow, the No. 1-seeded Williams said. She just played well.
But Williams has not won 18 Grand Slam singles titles by letting losses become patterns. And although Muguruza maintained her composure and her huge-hitting approach, Williams’s experience and athleticism would trump youth this time.
Her 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory — which turned for good on a nearly 13-minute service game early in the third set — put Williams back into the quarterfinals of the tournament, which she has won five times.
Williams will face Dominika Cibulkova, a surprise Australian Open finalist last year, who won a memorable duel of her own to defeat Victoria Azarenka in three sets in the opening act at Rod Laver Arena.
With early rain in Melbourne, the retractable roof was closed for the Azarenka-Cibulkova match, but dry conditions had returned by the time Williams and the 21-year-old Muguruza took the court, and the roof was reopened.
Williams has a 4-0 career record against Cibulkova, and she now has a 2-1 edge over Muguruza, whom she first played in 2013 in the second round here, winning 6-2, 6-0. But even then, after what looked like a rout, she was unusually complimentary.
She was blasting balls for winners, and she has a pretty big serve, Williams said then. I think she can do really well.
So far, so good. Two years later, Muguruza is up to No. 24 in the world despite foot surgery in 2013 that slowed her ascent for a time.
She decided only last fall, with the 2016 Summer Olympics on the horizon, that she would represent Spain instead of Venezuela internationally. The need to choose weighed on her for quite some time, with pressure being applied by both nations’ sports officials and tennis federations.
It was a truly difficult decision, she said after choosing Spain. I have Venezuela and Spain in my blood and in my heart.
She has a regal presence on the court, with straight-backed posture and innate elegance. Her game and her movement remain somewhat mechanical, but she is a ferocious and clean ball-striker who possesses the rare ability to move quickly to her right when a ball is struck at her body and hit an inside-out backhand with authority.
Her patterns and wrong-footing winners continually left Williams far from the ball in the early stages of the match. Williams was trying and usually failing to break her serve, missing nine of 10 break points at one stage.
But the key game in psychological terms came on Williams’s opening service game of the third set after Muguruza had held with authority. Williams, who said she had been a little sick, had to battle through a coughing attack in the early stages of the game and was soon down, 15-40.
Muguruza hit a huge forehand down the line. Williams lunged to her left and struck a one-handed backhand that floated high over the net. Muguruza moved forward and showed why, despite some doubles success, she remains more comfortable on the baseline than at the net: She mistimed a very manageable forehand volley, knocking it long. Williams saved six break points in all during the game, including one that she won with a first-serve winner that was called good but would have been overruled if Muguruza had challenged it.
Williams rode the momentum of that great escape and broke Muguruza’s serve in the next game to take a 2-1 lead. She never gave it back.
Though the younger generation is clearly on the rise, Williams is still on top of the pyramid.
