It was a shiny little silver bowl, something suitable for holding peanuts, but a neat bauble she will treasure. Li has already won a title here: the US Open sportsmanship award, which she received on Thursday. Li, seeded five, is a notch above Suárez Navarro and has been quietly ruthless on the bottom half of that side of the draw, giving up only 18 games before getting involved in a quarter-final bunfight with the 24th seed, Ekaterina Makarova, the determined Russian taking the second-set tie-break, before succumbing in the third. Will a semi-final against a grand slam champion go the same way? It is as unlikely as Nadal giving Richard Gasquet a public flogging. Williams is just about as superior in the women's draw as Rafael Nadal has been in the men's – to the point where a quarter-final is a mismatch. None of this is good news for Li Na in her semi-final against the reigning champion on Friday. Her serve is cranking up to 118 miles an hour and it is hitting the spot at 74%, which is tough to counter. She ventured from the safety of eyrie at the back 18 times, and secured the point 12 times. Oddly the Spaniard did not play as badly as the score indicates but in every facet of the game Williams crushed her, from the baseline to the net, a bald confirmation of the expansiveness she has brought to her tennis lately. She has, at times, been frighteningly dominant over the first 10 days of the championships and never more so than in the quarter-finals on Wednesday when she utterly embarrassed the 18th seed Carla Suárez Navarro in 52 minutes. And there is one mark she has hit twice before: winning Wimbledon then going on to take the US title, in 2002 and last year. The American, 32 this month, loves challenges and keeping her crown in New York may be one of the few left to inspire her to stay at the stratospheric levels she has reached in this tournament, indeed throughout 2013. But this week she made the point that, if statistics count, Steffi Graf (who staved off challenges to her title here in 19) would have to be regarded as better than her, although it was a self-assessment that did not entirely convince. Of anybody one would imagine was a relentless number cruncher – especially at her home tournament – the younger Williams sister would be at the top of the list. Strange as it may seem, though, Williams has never successfully defended any of her four US Open titles, something 14 other players have managed since 1948, including her sister Venus at the start of the millennium.
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