MARK SCHMETZER
Associated Press
MASON, Ohio (AP) — Julien Benneteau upset Australian Open champ Stan Wawrinka in the Western & Southern Open quarterfinals Friday.
The unseeded Frenchman won 1-6, 6-1, 6-2.
On the women’s side, top-seeded Serena Williams needed just 58 minutes to beat Jelena Jankovic 6-1, 6-3. Williams has never won the tournament outside Cincinnati in five previous appearances.
The third-seeded Wawrinka needed only 20 minutes to win the first set before unraveling with a string of unforced errors. He had 18 in the third set alone, while Benneteau had just five.
“It was a strange match, for sure,” Wawrinka said. “Even when I was winning the first set, 6-1, I wasn’t playing well. I wasn’t moving well.”
Benneteau has beaten Wawrinka in three consecutive matches. He reached the semifinals in Cincinnati for the first time.
Benneteau said he realized after the first set that if he didn’t play more aggressively from the baseline, the match would be over quickly.
“I could see that he started to force his first serve,” Benneteau said. “His percentage was going lower and lower. After that, because I hit the ball a little bit harder and I put, like I said, more weight in my balls, I can feel that he became tight and he forced and he made some mistakes, some unforced errors that he doesn’t do normally.”
Fifth-seeded Milos Raonic breezed past 15th-seeded Fabio Fognini 6-1, 6-0 in 57 minutes.
Williams had seven aces to none for the eighth-seeded Jankovic, who won the tournament in 2009. Williams also owned a 22-5 advantage in winners.
“Obviously, it was a bad day,” Jankovic said. “I felt slow. For some reason, I was late on shots. I didn’t do anything well. She didn’t have to do a lot. She played her game, and I didn’t do anything to disrupt that.”
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