Wimbledon glance: Serena Williams excited for quarters
Serena Williams celebrates on day seven of the Wimbledon Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon, on July 9, 2018. (Jonathan Brady/PA Wire/Abaca Press/TNS)
LOOKAHEAD
Serena Williams is excited to face an opponent whose game she’s familiar with in the Wimbledon quarterfinals.
Seven-time champion Williams has won all three of her meetings with first-time Grand Slam quarterfinalist Camila Giorgi, with the most recent coming in the first round of the 2016 Australian Open.
Despite the two-year gap since their previous meeting, Williams professed to having watched 52nd-ranked Giorgi play “a lot.” Having shaken off any rust that may have remained from her absence, Williams appears to be closing in on top form at the right time.
The match that precedes Williams on Centre Court promises to be more competitive. With the top 10 women having all been eliminated, No. 11 Angela Kerber is the highest-seeded player left in the tournament.
She faces 14th-seeded Daria Kasatkina, just two weeks after beating the Russian in a third-set tiebreaker on the grass courts of Eastbourne, tying their head-to-head record at 3-3.
Both two-time Grand Slam champion Kerber and 21-year-old Kasatkina reached the quarterfinals at last month’s French Open.
The other last-eight matches have 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko take on Dominika Cibulkova in a meeting of former Wimbledon quarterfinalists, while 13th-seeded Julia Goerges and 20th-seeded Kiki Bertens have both reached this stage at the All England Club for the first time.
The only fourth-round match that wasn’t completed on Monday — fifth-seeded Juan Martin del Potro against Frenchman Gilles Simon — will also be played to a finish. Del Potro led 7-6 (1), 7-6 (5), 5-7 when play was suspended because of darkness.
TUESDAY’S FORECAST
Partly cloudy. High of 74 degrees (24 Celsius).
MONDAY’S WEATHER
Sunny. High of 86 degrees (30 Celsius).
MONDAY’S KEY RESULTS
Men’s fourth round: No. 1 Roger Federer beat No. 22 Adrian Mannarino 6-0, 7-5, 6-4; No. 2 Rafael Nadal beat Jiri Vesely 6-3, 6-3, 6-4; No. 8 Kevin Anderson beat Gael Monfils 7-6 (4), 7-6 (2), 5-7, 7-6 (4); No. 9 John Isner beat No. 31 Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-4, 7-6 (8), 7-6 (4); No. 12 Novak Djokovic beat Karen Khachanov 6-4, 6-2, 6-2.
Women’s fourth round: No. 20 Kiki Bertens beat No. 7 Karolina Pliskova 6-3, 7-6 (1); No. 11 Angelique Kerber beat Belinda Bencic 6-3, 7-6 (5); No. 12 Jelena Ostapenko beat Aliaksandra Sasnovich 7-6 (4), 6-0; No. 25 Serena Williams beat Evgeniya Rodina 6-2, 6-2.
STAT OF THE DAY
1 — Mannarino won only one point on his serve during the opening set against Federer.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“This is tough because I cannot see myself from the side. I’m just like an artist and I’m playing with the heart, yeah. This is me, for sure.— Kasatkina on what people watching her for the first time should know about her.
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