MELBOURNE, January 30 – Serena and Venus Williams won their eighth Grand Slam doubles title when they beat Ai Sugiyama and Daniela Hantuchova at the Australian Open on Friday, and said they were hungry for more.
The sisters claimed their third Australian Opne doubles trophy after overpowering their opponents 6-3, 6-3 in just 75 minutes.
The Williams, who also won here in 2001 and 2003, kept intact their record of never having lost a doubles final at a Grand Slam.
They are now tied with Virginia Ruano Pascual and Paola Suarez as the third most successful Grand Slam women’s team in the Open era, behind Martina Navratilova/Pam Shriver with 21 and Gigi Fernandez/Natasha Zvereva (14).
"I think we complement each other on the court because we’re both extremely positive," Venus said adding, "We know when the other one moves, what the other one needs to do to compensate for that or to add to it."
Serena, who plays Dinara Safina for the singles title on Saturday, added that there was no reason why they couldn’t add to their tally and said they would try and play together at the year’s other three Grand Slams.
"If we keep playing, I think we can just keep getting titles," she said.
"We haven’t played so much in the last seven years or eight years. If we would have played during that time, we probably would have gotten even more."
The sisters were too powerful in every department for Japan’s Sugiyama and Slovakia’s Hantuchova, who were on the backfoot from the moment Sugiyama lost second her service game.
The Japanese player was under enormous pressure throughout the match and failed to hold her serve at all in the second set.
The two teams traded early service breaks in the first set, from Venus and Hantuchova, and then games went on serve until 4-3 when Sugiyama was broken for the first time.
Venus served out the next game to wrap up the first set and put the sisters firmly in control.
There was a run of five consecutive service breaks at the start of the second set but the Williams sisters always looked more dangerous.
At 4-3 down Sugiyama was broken again and this time Serena served out the set to love to claim the title.
"We played a great team today," Venus said, "They were very tough. At the end there I think we just maybe wanted it a little more."
