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NEW YORK. — The US Open quarter-finals kicked off yesterday with Serena Williams saying she’s just getting warmed up — an ominous assessment for the other seven women with eyes on the prize. “She’s coming, she hasn’t quite come out yet, though,” the world number one said of herself. Williams went missing in action after Wimbledon in large part because of a sore right shoulder. That seems astonishing since she has reached the last eight in New York without dropping a set or indeed even dropping her serve.

“I just feel like I’m going out there doing what I need to do,” she said. “I’m not overplaying, I’m not underplaying. I’m just trying to play my way into this tournament.”

She has played her way into a quarter-final against fifth-seeded Romanian Simona Halep, who has won just one of their eight career matches.

Williams said that record was not necessarily a guide to the challenge Halep would pose.

“To me it doesn’t really matter who I play because I have to expect they’re going to play the match of their life,” she said. “That’s how I go into these matches now.” They will headline women’s action today, when Ana Konjuh and Karolina Pliskova meet in a battle of first-time Grand Slam quarter-finalists.

Konjuh, an 18-year-old ranked 92nd in the world, shocked fourth-ranked Agnieszka Radwanska 6-4, 6-4 to reach the last eight.

She avenged a second-round loss at Wimbledon in which she held three match points against the Pole. — AFP.