Serena Williams fell to Karolina Pliskova in the final

Serena Williams, out of the Australian Open quarterfinals

The 24th Grand Slam title of Serena Williams will have to wait. The American tennis player did not capitalize four points for a match and ended with a defeat in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open.

Karolina Pliskova defeated Williams, 37, with a score of 6-4, 4-6 and 7-5, in a game that lasted more than two hours. This is the second time that the Czech American tennis legend trips in a major tournament after the Open United States in 2016.

During that event, the former world number one beat both Williams and her older sister, Venus.

Williams led 5-1 in the third set on Wednesday, but the situation changed completely when he turned his ankle in his first match point in that seventh game-changing direction.

Immediately afterward he committed a double fault and his service completely vanished; Williams lost the next 10 points in his service for the rest of the game.

Pliskova saved three more match points with 4-5, one with an impressive winning shot.

Losing in the quarterfinals is extremely rare for Williams: he had a record of 14-1 at this stage in his last 15 appearances in the big slam.

His last defeat at this stage was also in Melbourne, in 2013. On that occasion, injuries also played a role against Sloane Stephens.

After beating world number one Simona Halep of Romania by 6-1, 4-6 and 6-4, Serena Williams' path to the Australian Open title seemed almost flattened and unimpeded.

Even in his match of quarterfinals played this morning before the Czech Karolina Pliskova in the Rod Laver Arena of Melbourne Park, that idea was reaffirmed at every moment with the running of the meeting.

Despite having lost the first set, Serena recovered in the second and began to impose clearly in the third. However, with a 5-1 favor in that quarter, he squandered four match points, let his rival grow and ended up losing 6-4, 4-6 and 7-5 and saying goodbye to his dream of reaching his twenty-fourth title of Grand Slam.