Venus marches on

Venus Williams proved age is no barrier to success as she defeated Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova to reach the Australian Open semi-final.

Williams is the oldest player in the women's draw but that counted for little as she beat Pavlyuchenkova 6-4 7-6 to reach her 21st grand slam semi-final and keep alive the possibility of an all-Williams final.

Pavlyuchenkova broke Williams' serve four times but she was unable to build on her advantage and the 24th seed was made to pay for her failure to consolidate the break.

Leading 4-3 in the first set, Pavlyuchenkova lost the next four games before managing to halt Williams' momentum and draw level at 1-1 in the second.

Once again the Russian moved a break ahead to lead 4-3 in the set but Williams battled back to set-up the tie-break.

The breaker appeared to be going in Pavlyuchenkova's direction when she move 3-1 ahead, but Williams won six points on the trot to seal victory and become the oldest player in the women's singles to progress as far at a major since Martina Navratilova reached the Wimbledon final in 1994.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. Today was such a hard-fought match and she never let up,” Williams said.

“We’ve always had these quality matches and I knew today would be nothing less.

"It’s wonderful to be here to start the year out with this appearance. I want to go further, I’m not happy just with this.

“I’m so happy to be in a position to go further.”

Williams will face fellow American CoCo Vandeweghe in the last four and she is relishing a tough battle for a place in the final.

“I'm sure she’s going to want to be in her first final,” Williams said. “I'm going to want to be in only my second final here. So it's going to be a well-contested match.

“Should I look across the net and believe the person across the net deserves it more? This mentality is not how champions are made.

“I'd like to be a champion, in particular this year. The mentality I walk on court with is: I deserve this.”

Vandeweghe dropped just four games on her way to a 6-4 6-0 win over seventh seed Garbine Muguruza.

Fresh from knocking out defending champion Angelique Kerber, the American put pressure on Muguruza's serve in the opening game of the match but she had to wait until the seventh game of the first set before finally breaking.

Once she got the break she had little trouble in serving out for the set and she went raced through the second to book her place in the last four.

"I thought it was pretty good. I thought I took care of the things that I could control, which is the most important thing: not letting outside factors affect anything that was happening," she said.

"She's going to play some good points. I'm going to play some bad points. Also vice versa, I'm going to play some good points and she's going to play some bad points.

"It feels really good. It's amazing to be in a semi-final. But, you know, not satisfying. I want to keep going, keep playing. There's more things to do out on a tennis court that I'm hoping to achieve."

On her match with Williams, Vandeweghe added: "It's a dream to play someone you grew up watching. To play an unbelievable player, future Hall of Famer, Venus, to be on the court with her, I've only experienced it one time before.

"But to do it at this stage of a Grand Slam is kind of crazy. I mean, I can't really put it into words. Not only when I was younger, it was unknown if I even wanted to play tennis.

"I was playing basketball as well, but it was kind of, like, you see that, you see it happening, but you more see yourself there.

"To definitely have two Americans against each other in the semi-final I think is pretty cool."

eir Sport channels are available across the eir Vision, Sky and Vodafone TV platforms as well as on the eir Sport app. All 6 channels in the eir Sport pack are available for free if you are a residential eir broadband customer.