Venus and Clijsters set for showdown

By Simon Cambers

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wimbledon champion Venus Williams and
fourth seed Kim Clijsters, the tournament favorite, will square
off in a highly anticipated quarter-final at the U.S. Open on
Tuesday.

Neither player has dropped a set en route to the last
eight, with Venus having beaten her sister Serena in the
previous round and Belgian Clijsters, who is still looking to
win her first grand slam title, losing just 14 games on her way
to the quarter-finals.

Venus has won six of their nine meetings, but Clijsters
triumphed in their last clash, in the final at Stanford earlier
this summer.

Top seed Maria Sharapova will be making her first
quarter-final appearance at Flushing Meadows when she takes on
fellow Russian Nadia Petrova, the ninth seed, in Tuesday’s
other quarter-final.

In the men’s event, top seed and defending champion Roger
Federer headlines the action as he takes on German Nicolas
Kiefer in the fourth round.

Third seed and former champion Lleyton Hewitt of Australia
meets Slovakian Dominik Hrbaty, the 15th seed, while 11th seed
David Nalbandian of Argentina faces unseeded Italian Davide
Sanguinetti.

Two other unseeded players, Spaniard Fernando Verdasco and
Finn Jarkko Nieminen face each other in the last fourth-round
battle.