Venus advances to Sony quarters

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. -- American Venus Williams shanked overheads. She double-faulted three times in the final game. She grimaced and frowned and dropped her racket as if she wanted nothing more to do with it.

But Williams picked up her racket -- and her game when it mattered most, overcoming a sluggish start and wobbly finish Monday to beat Agnieszka Radwanska 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 at the Sony Ericsson Open.

"Fortunately I've had experiences like that before," Williams said. "I know how to get through it."

Seeded fifth, Williams advanced to the quarterfinals and defied the upset trend that has eliminated six of the top-10 women. Among those ousted Monday were Olympic champion Elena Dementieva and two-time Grand Slam winner Amelie Mauresmo.

Williams and her sister Serena are the lone remaining players in the top seven. They could renew their rivalry in the semifinals Thursday.

On the men's side, where there have been no big surprises, top-ranked Rafael Nadal reached the fourth round by beating qualifier Frederico Gil 7-5, 6-3. Fourth-seeded Andy Murray defeated Nicolas Massu 6-4, 6-4.

Williams was playing for the third day in a row, and she looked weary in the warm, sunny weather.

"I was hitting really well in the practice," she said. "I came out and things weren't going the way I imagined they would. But that's tennis."

After dropping the first set, she began to move better and won 11 of the next 13 games.

The No. 10-seeded Radwanska nearly overcame a 5-1 deficit in the third set. In the final game Williams fell behind love-40, but erased three break points that would have made the score 5-all.

"Oh, that's always fun," Williams said. "Every now and then, everybody has those kinds of matches.

"I just had a lot of errors. Just errors, errors."

Williams finished with 40 unforced errors but also had 43 winners. She hit 11 aces, the last on the final point.

While Williams is a three-time Key Biscayne champion, she hasn't won the title since 2001 and hasn't been to a semifinal since 2005.

"I feel good. I feel confident," she said. "I've been playing very well in the last few months."

Her quarter-final opponent will be No. 26-seeded Iveta Benesova, who swept No. 19 Anabel Medina Garrigues 6-4, 6-1.

The No. 4-seeded Dementieva lost to 18-year-old Caroline Wozniacki 7-5, 6-4. Wozniacki, the first Danish woman to crack the top 20, has reached a career-high 12th in the rankings while being helped by recent workouts in Las Vegas with Andre Agassi's former trainer, Gil Reyes.

"It feels amazing to me that I'm the No. 12 in the world," she said. "As a little girl growing up I was always watching everyone on TV, the top 20 players, and I wanted to be that girl as well."

Mauresmo was eliminated by unseeded Samantha Stosur 6-4, 6-4.