Williams shocked but Djokovic and Murray win

US tennis queen Serena Williams crashed to one of the worst defeats of her glittering grand slam career yesterday, as Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray moved safely into the Australian Open quarter-finals.

Williams, winner of 13 major titles including five in Melbourne, fell to the lowliest of opponents on the sun-baked centre court in Russia’s Ekaterina Makarova, the world number 56 coming off a five-month losing streak.

But 30-year-old Williams, who injured her right ankle this month, was far from her best in the error-strewn 6-2, 6-3 defeat and she admitted afterwards that she wouldn’t have played if the tournament was not a grand slam.

“My lefty serve is actually better than that. Maybe I should have started serving lefty,” said Williams, who dished up seven double-faults and 37 unforced errors.

“It was just disastrous really.”

The 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2010 winner, who missed last year’s event with injury, has not suffered a similar grand slam defeat since 2005, when she lost to 85th-ranked Jill Craybas at Wimbledon.

Makarova, 23, whose victory stripped the competition of its last American singles player, is now into her first grand slam quarter-final after failing to get beyond a tournament first round since last August.

Williams’s exit blows a giant hole in the women’s competition with Makarova, her next opponent Maria Sharapova, and Wimbledon winner Petra Kvitova the potential beneficiaries on her side of the draw.

Sharapova beat Germany’s Sabine Lisicki and Kvitova overpowered Ana Ivanovic to reach the quarter-finals, where she will meet Italy’s Sara Errani.

Kvitova reached the quarter-finals with a 6-2, 7-6 win over Ivanovic but not before a temporary meltdown in which she embarrassingly swung and missed a simple overhead.

In the men’s draw, defending champion Djokovic dropped his first set of the tournament against tireless Australian veteran Lleyton Hewitt before passing the late-night test 6-1, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.

But Murray, who remains on course to meet Djokovic in the semi-finals, took the easy route to the last eight when Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Kukushkin retired injured with the scores at 6-1, 6-1, 1-0.

Murray’s next opponent in Melbourne will be Kei Nishikori, who became the first Japanese man in 80 years to reach the Australia quarter-finals when he shocked 2008 finalist Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in five sets.

Djokovic now plays David Ferrer after the fifth seed beat Frenchman Richard Gasquet in straight sets.