Defending champion Serena Williams, still searching for her Grand Slam form after a yearlong absence, recovered from a poor start on Thursday to beat Simona Halep in three sets and move into the third round of Wimbledon and stay on course for a fifth title.
After dropping the first set, Williams regained her renowned fierce intensity and powerful shot--making to dominate the rest of the way, winning 3-6, 6-2, 6-1 on Court Two.
From 4-2 in the second set, the seventh-seeded American won eight out of the last nine games to re-establish her supremacy.
Photo: Reuters
It was the fourth consecutive three-setter Williams has played since returning last week at the Eastbourne grass-court tournament. She had been out for nearly a year after two foot operations and blood clots in her lungs.
In the men’s draw, Novak Djokovic of Serbia defeated South Africa’s Kevin Anderson 6-3, 6-4, 6-2.
On Wednesday, Taiwan’s Chuang Chia-jung and Hsieh Su-wei were defeated 6-4, 6-4 by Sorana Cirstea of Romania and Ayumi Morita of Japan in the women’s doubles.
Photo: EPA
Also on Wednesday, it was Venus’ turn to write the Williams plot line at Wimbledon as she survived a gripping three-set battle with 40-year-old Japanese Kimiko Date-Krumm.
Venus’ sister Serena sobbed after beating Aravane Rezai to open her title defense earlier in the week and 23rd-seed Venus was made to sweat buckets under Centre Court’s closed roof for a 6-7, 6-3, 8-6 win in just under three hours.
Men’s champion Rafa Nadal also got his first taste of indoor grasscourt tennis, but needed considerably less time to reach the third round by swatting aside American upstart Ryan Sweeting 6-3, 6-2, 6-4.
After a frustrating three-hour rain delay, last year’s runner-up Tomas Berdych and British hope Andy Murray were exposed to the elements, but proved equally ruthless on Court One. Berdych crushed Julien Benneteau 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 and fourth seed Murray cruised past Tobias Kamke 6-3, 6-3, 7-5.
With the light fading, three-time runner-up Andy Roddick beat Romania’s Victor Hanescu in straight sets to book a third-round clash with dangerous Spanish left-hander Feliciano Lopez.
Nadal will be spared the fury of Canadian Milos Raonic’s sledgehammer serve in the last 32 after the 20-year-old slipped awkwardly and retired injured when leading 3-2 in the first set against Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller.
Once again, however, it was the name Williams that had tongues wagging at the rain-hit championships.
On Monday it was a tennis outfit resembling a pair of curtains, on Tuesday Serena’s courtside blubbing took center stage and this time it was the sheer ferocity of 31-year-old Venus’ spell-binding duel with a veteran defying her age.
With play delayed on all other courts, Williams and Date-Krumm, who on Monday became the -second-oldest player to win a women’s singles match at Wimbledon, provided an early contender for match of the tournament.
“I thought she played unbelievable today,” Williams, who returned from a five-month injury layoff at Eastbourne last week, told reporters. “I thought she had some luck on her side, too, with net cords, balls hitting lines. I just thought today was a perfect storm for her to try to get a win. Thankfully I had some answers.”
Date-Krumm made her Wimbledon debut in 1989 when the Williams sisters were still bashing balls about on park courts in Compton. Her best Wimbledon performance was in 1996 when she lost to Steffi Graf in the semi-finals, before taking a 12-year break from tennis.
“She hits a ball that no one else hits. I never played anyone who hits the ball like this,” Williams said of the gritty Japanese whose straight-line ball trajectory was a throwback to the days before topspin ruled the courts.
Williams certainly seemed bemused as she lost her first three service games to trail 5-1. She fought back to force a tiebreak, went 6-1 down, clawed it back to 6-6, but slipped behind as an inspired Date-Krumm grabbed the next two points.
Williams upped her game to level the match and moved 2-0 up in the decider, before Date-Krumm launched a final attack, hitting shots unerringly close to the lines and raiding the net at every opportunity.
At 6-6, 30-30 former world No. 4 Date-Krumm sniffed a break, but Williams scorched a sublime backhand winner and sealed victory in the following game.
Play finally started elsewhere around the All England Club at 2:30 in the afternoon, with organizers desperately hoping to work through a backlog of matches.
Fast-track victories like Nadal’s will help. Indoors or out the French Open champion has quickly found the grass-court groove, although he would prefer having the sun on his back.
“A new experience for me, a good experience.” he said.
“But the tournament is outdoor, it’s not indoor. I prefer outdoors,” he said after his forehand put Sweeting to the sword in front of Prince Charles’ wife, Camilla the -Duchess of Cornwall.
Women’s second seed Vera Zvonareva, runner-up to Serena Williams last year, rolled into the third round after beating fellow Russian Elena Visnina 6-1, 7-6, although such is her low profile that she was not even required to give a news conference.
Wailing fourth seed Victoria Azarenka, whose sound effects have not pleased the top brass at Wimbledon, crushed Iveta Benesova, while last year’s surprise semi-finalists Petra Kvitova and Tsvetana Pironkova also advanced.
One women’s seed to fall was Bethanie Mattek-Sands, the self-confessed Lady Gaga of tennis.
She walked on court wearing a white frilly jacket adorned with tennis balls, but the 30th-seeded American was bounced out in a delayed first-round match by Japan’s Misaki Doi.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier