Defending champion ends Robson's run

Sports Writer

Monday 3 September 2012

THE Laura Robson bandwagon has reached the end of the line.

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Stewart Fisher

The 18-year-old has arrived on the world scene in New York this week, the teenager thrilling this tournament with back-to-back victories against Kim Clijsters and Li Na en route to becoming the first British woman since Jo Durie here in 1991 to reach the last 16 of a grand slam.

But her attempts to continue her startling journey into the quarter- finals at Flushing Meadows ultimately went off track when reigning champion Sam Stosur, 10 years her senior, showed enough steel to grind out a 6-4, 6-4 victory. While Stosur is a native of the Gold Coast, Robson left Melbourne at the age of six to travel to England. This was either an all-Australian derby or an Ashes match-up, but it was Robson's hopes which were cremated.With a place in the last eight on the line, no quarter was asked for or given. With victory, Robson would have become only the third woman in history, alongside Clijsters and Serena Williams, to have knocked out three grand slam champions in successive rounds – not to mention the first Brit in a major quarter-final for nigh on 30 years – and it seemed like an entirely plausible outcome when she typically grasped the early initiative, breaking for 2-1 with a blistering forehand which Stosur got her racket to, only for it to spin into the crowd.Hold her serve, and her nerve, and things might have been so different, but in a matter of minutes the teenager had failed to consolidate the break and the world No.7 had been allowed to recover parity again at 2-2. The remainder of the set went with serve, thanks in no small part to Robson squandering a break point chance at 4-4, too eagerly snatching at a return as she chased a smart, high-kicking serve from her opponent. In the very next game, the pressure finally started to tell. After saving two of three set points, an untimely double fault handed her opponent the first set. It was an advantage she would never concede.Further tantalising openings for Robson came and went at the start of the second set when the 18-year-old was unable to capitalise on three break points. Stosur, a grown woman with the kind of movement and conditioning that Robson can aspire to as she works with Andy Murray's fitness coach Jez Green, on the other hand, was clinical; when one came her way in the set's fourth game she gobbled it up. There must have been every temptation for the 18-year-old to enter stroppy teenager mode, but she kept the shrieking to a minimum.At 2-5, pure adrenalin was keeping the teenager in it. At one moment she was scooping a tame drop shot into the net, at another producing gutsy tennis to saving no fewer than five match points. There was a genuine outpouring of emotion from the crowd when a Stosur forehand was shown by Hawk-Eye to have dropped millimetres beyond the baseline and her charmed life continued for one more game. Or so we thought. Because Stosur just couldn't get rid of Robson. The Australian didn't fare any better with her sixth and seventh match points, Robson saving them as she ripped into a couple of sensational returns and before long the 28-year-old was trudging back to the corner, her serve broken at the crucial moment. But when the balls were in Robson's hands she discovered that the pressure had shifted. After saving match point No.8, her ninth life was to prove her last one, even a net cord unable to save her as one last forehand went long. The stats told their own story: Robson had served only two aces and made 41 unforced errors.The match was played on the Louis Armstong arena, named after the jazz musician who lived nearby. To borrow from one of his most well-known songs, Robson has all the time in the world.

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Defending champion ends Robson's run

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