{{Serena Williams felt she was close to accessing the sporting “zone” during her emphatic 6-2 6-1 victory over Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the final of the Brisbane International on Saturday.}}<\/p>\n
Williams needed only 51 minutes to beat the Russian in an ominous warm-up for the Australian Open, which begins in Melbourne on January 14.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been in the zone a few times,” Williams told reporters.
\n“I don’t know if I was in the zone today, but I was definitely heading in that direction. I’ve been in the twilight zone before, where I just felt so good I couldn’t do anything wrong.”<\/p>\n
The world No.3’s performance was so strong that Pavlyuchenkova said afterwards: “I always feel like I don’t know how to play tennis when I play against you.”<\/p>\n
Williams captured the 47th title of her career. She has won 35 of her past 36 matches while claiming Wimbledon, the Olympics, the US Open, the season-ending tour championship and now the opening event of 2013.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old American roared through the Brisbane tournament without the loss of a set.<\/p>\n
She said: “I was looking at a lot of old matches on YouTube, and I feel like right now I’m playing some of my best tennis. I feel like I want to do better and play better still.”<\/p>\n
Williams said a decision to seek on-court tranquillity after a shattering defeat to Virginie Razzano at the French Open last year had triggered her career resurrection.<\/p>\n
“I really started being more calm on the court and just relaxing more, if it’s possible for me to relax,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Serena Williams felt she was close to accessing the sporting “zone” during her emphatic 6-2 6-1 victory over Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the final of the Brisbane International on Saturday.}} Williams needed only 51 minutes to beat the Russian in an ominous warm-up for the Australian Open, which begins in Melbourne on January 14. “I’ve been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-5007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5007"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=5007"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=5007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}