Venus Williams defeats Karolina Sprem in Kloten.

Croatian Karolina Sprem made it into the third round of the Olympic tournament in Athens, since then she lost her first round match at the US Open losing to her Fed Cup teammate Jelena Kostanic. She lost the second round in the new tournament in Hasselt, Belgium after defeating Medina Garrigues she lost to Camerin. She had trouble against Farina Elia in Filderstadt and lost in three sets again in the first round. In Moscow she lost to Vera Zvonareva in three sets in the second round.

After almost beating Venus Williams in Berlin this year, losing just in three sets, all eyes were on Sprem. How would she defend herself against the top players? She had defeated Kim Clijsters on her way to the semifinals in Berlin. She also knocked out Venus Williams out of Wimbledon winning two tiebreaks; Davenport was too big for her in the quarterfinals. She also reached the quarterfinal in Montreal but lost to Amelie Mauresmo in three sets. After the Olympics Sprem just did not come through and lost to less higher ranked players in early rounds.

As today she again met Venus Williams at the Swisscom Challenge, their third meeting this year. And today Williams was just too big for her. Hitting too many unforced errors and not good enough to attack Williams ground strokes. Another factor in her defeat was her poor service, hitting five double faults; the service was just not good enough today and Williams was returning well.

Venus Williams broke Sprem’s first service game when the Croat hits a double fault at 15-40. In her second service game Sprem could repair the double fault that she hit there. In the seventh game Sprem is broken when she hits too many unforced errors. Williams is serving for the set and takes a 1-0 lead after 25 minutes of play.

In the second set Sprem could not change her game. With the same strategy of Williams and with the same mistakes by Sprem the set was a copy of the first one. The American breaks in the third service game and takes a 4-1 lead as she breaks again at 0-40, Sprem again hits too many of unforced errors.

Holding her own service Williams leads 5-1, Sprem holds her service game for 2-5 but there is no way that she is coming back into this match. Venus Williams is serving and ends the match 6-2, 6-2.

“My game was nice and with a good pace, that is what is good about my game; my pace and my power”, Venus Williams said about winning the match. “I can see my chances are good for the championship, it's all about getting into my rhythm.”

With a string of injuries Williams knows what it's like to pull out of tournaments, she sees the Tour schedule is pretty full, “What I think is that everybody must do what they want to do, every player should make a break every once in a while, we are no superwomen”.  About changing the Tour calendar and playing less tournaments she said that there is no simple answer to that.

“Looking back I think it's great that I am tenth or ninth on the ranking with all the injuries I had” Williams replied after being asked if she aiming for the top spot again. As hardest service record holder she said that she was thinking about that today, she was hitting 205 km earlier in her career. “Now I think of placement more than speed”.

Being asked about her staying in Europe, she said she liked Zurich very much and that it was easy to communicate with everybody because there is no language barrier. The bad weather gives her more reasons to wear everything she brought, “Now I can wear my coats, hats, boots and everything, so that’s nice. I like the weather in Europe, I can wear all my clothes”.