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Serena Williams Wins, Setting Up Showdown With Naomi Osaka

MELBOURNE, Australia — Serena Williams was not about to let Simona Halep derail her run to a 24th Grand Slam singles championship. Not again.

The summer of 2019 may seem like a lifetime ago in a world reeling from a pandemic that is taking a second lap of the calendar. But for Williams, the scab from her humbling loss to Halep in the Wimbledon final that July remains as fresh as the day Halep held her to four games on the All-England Club’s hallowed grass.

Williams’s 6-3, 6-3 victory against Halep on Tuesday in the Australian Open quarterfinals was not as surgical as the dismemberment that Halep administered in their previous meeting, a performance that Billie Jean King described as “one of the most perfectly executed matches I’ve ever seen.