Serena Williams, Fabio Fognini and Novak Djokovic in US Open action on Sunday
Monday 7 September 2015 18:43, UK
World No 1 Serena Williams gets set for an all-American battle against the highly-talented Madison Keys on Sunday at the US Open.
The top seed has won all 24 Grand Slam matches she's played in 2015, and needs four more victories to become the first tennis player since Steffi Graf in 1988 to win the sport's four most prestigious tournaments in the same season.
Williams, who also won last year's US Open, is on a winning streak of 31 matches at majors, but 20-year-old Keys is eager to cause a major upset in their fourth-round showdown on Arthur Ashe Stadium.
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So when Keys was asked by a reporter how she would feel about being "remembered as the villain" in Williams' "fairy tale," the question drew a shrug.
"What am I going to say? 'I want her to beat me?'" Keys replied. "I mean, yeah, I want to go out and I want to win. I mean, obviously it's a big story: She's won four (major titles) in a row and she's going for the calendar-year [Slam]. That's great, but at the same time I want to win. So I'd be OK with beating her, yeah."
Williams has played Keys once before, beating in her straight sets in the semi-finals of the Australian Open in January. Their games are similar, both based on huge serves and powerful groundstrokes, so it has all the makings of a New York thriller.
By the time Serena heads out on court to face Keys, she already will know whether the winner's quarter-final opponent will be her older sister.
The match scheduled to follow Venus Williams against Anett Kontaveit in the main stadium.
While Venus is 35, a former No 1, and the owner of seven major singles titles, Kontaveit is a 19-year-old qualifier from Estonia who is ranked 152nd and hadn't won a Grand Slam match until Monday.
Frenchwomen Kristina Mladenovic also faces Ekaterina Makarova from Russia while all eyes will be on whether Eugenie Bouchard will be fit enough to face Roberta Vinci from Italy.
The Canadian 25th seed withdrew from the doubles and mixed doubles events on Saturday after falling in the locker room and sustaining a head injury.
In the men's draw, the only man to drop the first two sets of a Grand Slam match against Rafael Nadal and come back to win - Fabio Fognini - will try to follow that up against 18th-seeded Feliciano Lopez of Spain.
Fognini's thrill-a-minute, 70-winner victory over Nadal ended at nearly 1.30am on Saturday in New York, so there will be a question mark over his powers of recovery.
World No 1 Novak Djokovic takes on Spain's Roberto Bautista Agut while defending champion Marin Cilic faces Jeremy Chardy. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Benoit Paire will battle it out in an all-French affair.
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