Coetzer advances to quarter-final

Williams twice broke Po’s service in the final set to take lead of 4-3 and 5-4, only to have her own service broken. Williams went up 3-2 in the tie-breaker and then took the next two points on her serve to gain a 5-2 lead.

Po won one point on her serve to get to 5-3 but Williams then closed it out.

“I think I played OK,” Williams said. “In the first set, I served well. In the second set, some double faults started creeping in. I should have been ready to hit more balls. I was going for too many winners.”

Williams advanced to play Alexandra Stevenson, who is competing in the event as an amateur, on today.

Amanda Coetzer also advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-1,6-3 victory over Elena Wagner.

Coetzer, the no. 3 seed from South Africa, connected on 35 of 53 first serves and took 72 minutes to dispatch the German challenger.

“I think I played a lot better (than Tuesday),” Coetzer said.

“I made a few less errors and was more consistent. I felt pretty comfortable out there. I thought I served very well today and I’m happy about that as I have been working on my serve.”

Coetzer advanced to play Cara Black, who defeated Alexiadechaume-Balleret 7-6 (7-5), 7-6 (7-5) earlier yesterday.

“It feels nice to be in the quarter-finals,” Coetzer said.

“Cara Black is a tough competitor and I’ll need to be on top of my game.”

Williams, who was named to the 1999 US Fed Cup squad yesterday with her sister, Serena, said she was looking forward to the challenge.

“We would really like to play fed cup. We’ve never played on any kind of team before or had the chance to do anything for our country,” she said. Hopefully, they’ll let us play doubles together. We’ve finally shown that we can play together as a team.”

Others selected by captain Billie Jean King were US Open champion Lindsay Davenport, former no. 1 Monica Seles, Lisa Raymond, Chanda Rubin, Amy Frazier, Corina Morariu, Tara Snyder and Mary Joe Fernandez.