Hard-Serving Williams Zips Into Quarters Favorite-Son Rafter Ousted By Berasategui

Comfortably ensconced under the retractable roof while rain washed away outside matches, Venus Williams rolled into the quarterfinals of the Australian Open with her hardest serving and boldest play yet at the net.

Williams took the opportunity against baselinehugging Patty Schnyder to practice the subtleties of her serve and volley game, and it paid off with a 54-minute, 6-4, 6-1 victory today.

Williams set up match point with the fastest ace of any woman in the tournament so far, a sizzling 115 mph, then put the game away at love with a backhand down the line well out of Schnyder’s reach.

“I’ve been working on that serve since November,” Williams said. “For the first time in tournament play, I served well. And I made up my mind to go to the net. I have to make it one of my goals to get there and stop being lazy.”

Runner-up at the U.S. Open and playing the Australian for the first time, Williams improved with each match the first week. Against Schnyder, Williams won 17 of her approaches to the net, served four aces, and limited herself to one double-fault.

Next up for Williams is No. 2 Lindsay Davenport, who blew away No. 15 Ruxandra Dragomir 6-0, 6-0.

In men’s play, defending champion Pete Sampras struggled more than expected before securing a quarter-final berth with a 7-6 (11-9), 6-4, 6-4 victory over Morocco’s Hicham Arazi, the 5-foot-9 baseliner who knocked out giant Mark Philippoussis in the first round.

Sampras, who served 24 aces, couldn’t put away the first set until his sixth set point against Arazi, who hustled after everything and often produced brilliant shots that left Sampras shaking his head in disbelief.

In four matches, all against unseeded players, Sampras still hasn’t dropped a set. He next meets another unseeded player, the winner of the Karol KuceraRichard Fromberg match.

No. 6 Petr Korda beat Wimbledon finalist Cedric Pioline 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 to reach the quarters. Korda breezed through the first two sets, stumbled early in the third when he felt dizzy, then recuperated to come back from 0-2 in the final set. Korda ran off 15 straight points, including three straight love games, to take control at 5-2 in the final set.

Korda was one of only four men’s seeds remaining in the round of 16, setting a record for the fewest number of seeds into that round at any Grand Slam event in the Open era. The previous record was five at the 1994 French Open, the 1971 and 1996 Wimbledons, and the 1971 and 1988 U.S. Opens.

The most prominent seed to fall was Australia’s Patrick Rafter on Saturday night.

Rafter, the heart of this tournament Open, the winner of the U.S. Open and No. 2 seed whom nearly everyone expected to play in the quarters against Andre Agassi and go on to the final, hit the wall against the 5-foot-8 Spaniard Alberto Berasategui and fell 6-7 (2-7), 7-6 (9-7), 6-2, 7-6 (7-4).

Berasategui, a surprise finalist in the 1994 French Open who had never gone beyond the third round of any other major tournament, had to come from behind to reach the round of 16 against Agassi.

Rafter led a set and a break at 4-2 in the second when the power went out of his game.

“I felt like I couldn’t break an egg,” he said.