Serena Williams beats Annika Beck 6-3, 6-0 to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon and move into second place with her 300th career Grand Slam match win.
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The 34-year-old has now won 82 matches at Wimbledon as she remains on course to equal Steffi Graf’s Open era record of 22 Grand Slam titles with her seventh Wimbledon crown.
And while the world No 1 admits she prefers having the middle Sunday at Wimbledon off, backed the All England Club’s decision for play today after a week of rain delays.
“Obviously I love having that Sunday off, but I’m a little behind in my matches, so I guess I had to play an extra day”, Williams said. “To be honest, I felt like losing that first set so tight and her playing better than she’s ever played in her life really helped me to realize that I can play better”.
Serena Williams earned a decent day’s rest on the middle Sunday at Wimbledon as Jo-Wilfried Tsonga had to work overtime – 19-17 in the fifth set – in another marathon involving John Isner. That’s awesome, right? I think that’s a lot of matches.
Beck was just 10 then and she had reached the last 32 at Wimbledon for the first time this year thanks in large part to a first round escape act when she saved three match points before defeating Heather Watson.
Djokovic, who has a 30-match Grand Slam winning streak, was about to serve while trailing 6-5 in the fourth set Saturday, and down two sets to one.
Women’s seeded winners in the second round: No. 1 Serena Williams, No. 13 Svetlana Kuznetsova, No. 21 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, No. 24 Barbora Strycova.
CoCo Vandeweghe, making a strong run at Wimbledon for the second year in a row, beat No. 7 Roberta Vinci of Italy 6-3, 6-4 in the first match on Centre Court.
But it was Tsonga who ultimately came out on top, breaking Isner with the American serving at 17-17 and then serving for the match.
She’ll next face Coco Vandeweghe, who beat No. 7 Roberta Vinci in straight sets.
Vandeweghe advanced to the quarterfinals here past year before losing to Maria Sharapova in three sets. Kyrgios, who served out the match after receiving a time delay warning, made it to the quarterfinals as a wild card in 2014. This is the first time she’s been seeded at a Grand Slam. “I wasn’t sure, but I just tried to stay focused”.
Also advancing was 50th-ranked Elena Vesnina, who beat 225th-ranked American qualifier Julia Boserup 7-5, 7-5. The Russian previously reached the fourth round at Wimbledon in 2009. The 22,000 spectators who were admitted to the grounds were the lucky ones among the 111,000 who had gone online at 3pm the previous day to snap up the tickets, which sold out in just 27 minutes.
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High noon comes for Novak Djokovic when he resumes his third-round match at Wimbledon two sets down against Sam Querrey of the United States on Saturday.
