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SERENA WILLIAMS DOMINATES KVITOVA TO GET TO 2012 SEMIS AT WIMBLEDON

July 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Serena will go on to the semi-finals of the 2012 Wimbledon in London. Serena completely dominated Petra Kvitova, hitting 12 aces on her way to winning 6-5, 7-3. Kvitova seemed powerless against Serena’s powerful first serve. It also came down to court coverage and Kvitova seemed to be a step too slow.

Serena Williams came out playing at a higher level than she has played all through the tournament. She had said that she respects Kvitova tough pay and knew she had to match it or else get beaten.

Now that the top seed, Maria Sharapova is out, Serena seems to be the favorite to lift the Wimbledon trophy this year.

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SERENA WILLIAMS FIGHTS FROM BEHIND TO WIN AND ADVANCE TO WIMBLEDON 4th ROUND

July 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

While watching Serena Williams come from behind at Wimbledon, older sister Venus sat in the front row stifling a yawn.

Nothing to worry about.

Venus was correct – barely. Serena hit a Wimbledon-record 23 aces, held every service game and escaped an upset bid by Zheng Jie, winning 6-7 (5), 6-2, 9-7 in the third round Saturday.

Williams, who erased all six break points she faced, served three times to stay in the match and held each time at love. She was pushed to deuce serving in the final game but closed out the victory with a volley winner, then hopped in glee on the Centre Court grass.

”I just wanted to get through that match,” Williams said. ”The last thing I wanted to do was lose.”

On an eventful day at Wimbledon, unseeded Yaroslava Shvedova swept every point in a set, American Sam Querrey lost the second-longest match ever at Wimbledon, and three-time runner-up Andy Roddick fended off questions about retirement after being eliminated.

The 5-foot-4 1/2 Zheng, seeded 25th, played with little flash but plenty of consistency against Williams, committing just 17 unforced errors. She hung in the match despite hitting only one ace.

Venus Williams – a five-time champion who lost in the first round – may not have been concerned, but Serena looked plenty worried. She rocketed a return to break for an 8-7 lead in the final set, then showed how much she wanted to win, throwing back her head and letting out a long scream.

Williams has been stalled at 13 Grand Slam titles since winning Wimbledon for the fourth time in 2010, and dealt with a series of health issues in 2010-11.

Her next opponent will be Shvedova, who won all 24 points in the first set – a so-called ”golden set” – and beat French Open runner-up Sara Errani 6-0, 6-4. It’s the first known golden set by a woman in the Open era, the International Tennis Federation said, and the BBC showed a highlight package of all 24 points.

Williams will face Shvedova on Monday.

”Hopefully I’ll be able to win a point in the set,” Williams said. ”That will be my first goal, and then I’ll go from there.”

Defending champion Petra Kvitova, No. 2-ranked Victoria Azarenka and former French Open champions Ana Ivanovic and Francesca Schiavone also reached the fourth round.

Lukas Rosol, who stunned two-time champion Rafael Nadal in the second round, flopped in his follow-up, losing to No. 27-seeded Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-2, 6-3, 7-6 (6).

 

”I knew that this can happen,” said Rosol, a Czech ranked 100th. ”I was thinking only just to don’t sleep and open eyes again and play good tennis.”

Americans Mardy Fish and Brian Baker made the round of 16, but not Roddick. He failed to convert two set points in the second set and lost to No. 7-seeded David Ferrer 2-6, 7-6 (8), 6-4, 6-3.

Roddick, whose ranking is in decline at age 29, wouldn’t say whether he thinks he’ll be back for Wimbledon next year.

”If I don’t have a definitive answer in my own mind, it’s going to be tough for me to articulate a definitive answer to you,” he said.

Fish, playing in his first tournament since undergoing a procedure on his heart in May, beat David Goffin 6-3, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (6). Baker, an American mounting a career comeback from reconstructive elbow surgery, continued his surprising run by beating Benoit Paire 6-4, 4-6, 6-1, 6-3.

”It is crazy, kind of, what’s going on,” said Baker, ranked 126th. ”I’m still trying to stay focused on the task at hand and not get too wrapped around it. Because once you do that, I think it’s tough to be able to play your best.”

The unseeded Querrey lost to No. 16 Marin Cilic in a 5 1/2-hour marathon, 7-6 (6), 6-4, 6-7 (2), 6-7 (3), 17-15. No. 5 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga swept Lukas Lacko 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 and next faces Fish. No. 4 Andy Murray’s four-set victory over Marcos Baghdatis ended at 11:02 p.m. to end the day.

On a sunny, windy afternoon, the retractable Centre Court roof was open after being closed all day Friday, and the breeze that had Williams’ skirt flapping might have contributed to her slow start. She struggled with her returns, and several times shanked serves by Zheng that barely reached 100 mph.

Williams didn’t have a break-point chance in the first set, and every point Zheng won in the tiebreaker came on an error by her opponent, including two mishit returns.

”I thought, `Serena, just relax and be calm,”’ Williams said. ”I felt good. I never felt like I was going to lose this match.”

Williams briefly locked on Zheng’s serve in the second set, sweeping the final 13 points to even the match.

In the last set, Williams overcame a love-40 deficit to hold for 2-all. Two games later, when she bounced a kick second serve over her opponent’s head for an ace, Zheng managed a laugh.

Later in the set Williams won 14 consecutive service points, including three aces in one game to reach 7-all. She held 18 times and lost only 18 of 98 service points.

”It’s a tough match, because she has big serve,” Zheng said. ”It’s very difficult against her on the grass court.”

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ANDY RODDICK LOSES TO DAVID FERRER, ANOTHER AMERICAN DOWN IN WIMBLEDON

June 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Andy Roddick loses to David Ferrer in the third round of Wimbledon 2012. Andy Roddick started extremely well, cracking that signature serve of his and overpowering Ferrer. Roddick won the first set 6-2 and looked like as though he was going to pressure the younger man from Spain off the court.

Shortly afterward, Andy seemed to run out of steam and dropped the next three sets and lost by the score of 2-6,7-6,6-4,6-3. Andy Murray is now the lone American standing in the Wimbledon 2012 tournament in the London. More news to come…

 

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ROGER FEDERER ESCAPES DISASTER IN WIMBLEDON 2nd ROUND WIN

June 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

WIMBLEDON, England — The aftershocks of Rafael Nadal’s upset loss were still being felt around Wimbledon on Friday afternoon, when Roger Federer opened his third-round match with a heavenly one-handed backhand winner that skidded past the French veteran Julien Benneteau.

Nadal’s defeat to someone named Lukas Rosol under the same Centre Court roof almost precisely 19 hours earlier had assured Federer the No. 2 ranking he had ceded last month, and provided an unmistakable boost for a deposed champion who had entered Wimbledon as an afterthought — at least as much an afterthought as someone who’s won the tournament a half-dozen times can possibly be.

No one then could have expected the 30-year-old Swiss would find himself two points from elimination after dropping the first two sets, not after Federer had lost just nine games total in his first two matches to equal his best-ever start at the All England Club. Yet there he was, the 16-time Grand Slam champion, precipitously close to his first exit from a major tournament before the quarterfinal stage in more than eight years.

By the end Federer had showed a fighter’s grit in rallying for a 4-6, 6-7(3), 6-2, 7-6(6), 6-1 triumph over a game Julien Benneteau, whose concentration and fitness conspired against him down the stretch. It marked the eighth time Federer won from two sets down in his career, a comeback he attributed to his deep well of experience. “Probably having been there so often, down two sets to love, knowing how to handle the situation, not to panic,” he explained, “knowing that once I broke the beginning of the third set that this match is completely open, and I’m only going to get stronger for here.”

A cathartic and deserved victory, to be sure, though it’s clear Federer will need to raise his level if he expects to capture a seventh Wimbledon title to match the tournament record held jointly by Pete Sampras and William Renshaw.

Benneteau had defeated Federer the last time they’d met, rallying from a set down in the second round of the 2009 Paris Masters. It was easily the biggest victory of his career and he wept openly afterward, but that match had taken place before a partisan crowd on Benneteau’s native soil. Federer may be Swiss, but Centre Court is his spiritual home, and most in attendance Friday regarded the Frenchman as a mere speed bump on the former champion’s route to a fourth-round date with unseeded Xavier Malisse — whose earlier victory over Fernando Verdasco cleared yet another seed from a quarter that’s looking more and more favorable for Federer by the day.

Yet Benneteau controlled the rallies early on, while Federer was uncharacteristically sloppy, connecting on just 44 percent of his first serves in the opening set. After closing out a second-set tiebreak to stake an improbable two-sets-to-none lead, the 30-year-old Frenchman had struck 37 winners against 17 unforced errors, compared to 16 winners and 18 misfires for Federer.

“I tried to stay calm,” Federer recalled. “And I was.”

A turning point came in the first game of the third, when a wrong-footed Benneteau fell on his surgically repaired wrist. Clearly shaken, he quickly went down two breaks as Federer capitalized on a series of momentary lapses. “If your level is a bit lower, right here, right now he takes the opportunity,” Benneteau lamented. “At the beginning of the third set I was a little bit not as good as I was during the first two sets, and in five minutes it’s 4-0.”

By the time Federer closed out the fourth-set breaker to push the match to a fifth and deciding set, Henman Hill was packed as spectators bunkered in for a thrilling finish. It never came, however, due to the severe cramping that compromised Benneteau’s serve and gave Federer all the opportunity he needed to ruthlessly close the show in 26 minutes.

“Mentally he’s a rock, you know. He’s two sets down and he doesn’t show anything,” Benneteau said. “He has a capacity to improve his game during the match. He was more aggressive right after I serve the first shot of the rally, he tried to hit the all stronger and to be more aggressive, and you feel it when you are on the other side.”

No one doubts Federer is capable of summoning the sublime tennis that made him the sport’s consummate stylist in addition to its all-time Grand Slam champion — no sane observer can — but whether he can do it on the pressure points in the biggest matches is the singular doubt hanging over his quest to become the first men’s player to win a major past his 30th birthday since Andre Agassi at the 2003 Australian Open.

He passed the test Friday as day turned to night at the All England Club, the hallowed venue where his legend was forged and later immortalized, yet whether Federer can sharpen his consistency and elevate his game for the sterner challenges at the business end of this year’s tournament remains to be seen.

From Sports Illustrated

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RAFAEL NADAL GOES DOWN IN SECOND ROUND OF WIMBLEDON 2012

June 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

WIMBLEDON, England — Rafael Nadal suffered his worst defeat at a Grand Slam in seven years on Thursday, losing to Lukas Rosol, 6-7 (9), 6-4, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 in the second round of Wimbledon. And yes, everyone in Southwest London (and all around the world) is still trying to understand what just happened.

If men’s tennis over the last five years has taught us anything, it’s that players ranked No. 100 in the world aren’t supposed to do this. For so long we have grown accustomed to seeing the Big Three of Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer make it not only to the second week of majors but also into the final weekend. If they’re going to lose, it’s to each other or a very small handful of players who have already proved they have the talent to pull it together for five sets on a big stage.

But they don’t lose to players ranked No. 100 in the world. Not until now.

Nadal took to Centre Court one minute after 6 p.m. local time for a seemingly routine match against Rosol, a guy who even the most dedicated of tennis cognoscenti would have to confess to not knowing much about (and Nadal actually had to ask reporters how old he was after the match). The 26-year-old Czech made his Wimbledon main draw debut this year after losing in the first round of qualifying the last five years. At 6-foot-5, Rosol has a stereotypically big game for a man his size: a booming cannon of a serve and a big forehand that he likes to hit with reckless abandon. I’ve seen Rosol play before, and though the power does wow you, his consistency leaves you shaking your head. After all, there’s a reason he’s ranked No. 100. He grips, he rips and, generally speaking, he misses more than he makes.

But on Thursday, he gripped, he ripped and he hit winners. He hit a lot of them — 65, to be exact. And there wasn’t a darn thing the 11-time Grand Slam champion could do about it.

 

“I didn’t feel pain. I didn’t feel anything,” Rosol told reporters after undoubtedly the best match of his career. “I was in a trance a little bit. That’s [the] best. I had my adrenaline so high, so I was playing good.”

There were signs of Rosol’s fearlessness early in the first set, as he broke Nadal in the fifth game, only to see that advantage disappear immediately when the Spaniard broke back. Rosol continued to hold his nerve  – and his serve — en route to a first-set tiebreaker. They traded set points in the tiebreaker, but on Nadal’s fourth set point, Rosol fired a big serve that Nadal sliced back short in the middle of the court. Rosol, being the fearless hitter that he is, went for a huge forehand put-away winner that he smacked into the middle of the net. Nadal, just as he did in his first-round match against Thomaz Bellucci, had escaped to take the first set.

Those are the kinds of missed opportunities that can haunt these lower-ranked players when everything seems to be coming together for them to pull off a monumental upset. But Rosol was, surprisingly, unfazed. He came out and broke Nadal in the first game of the second set, the only break he needed. Behind his powerful serve (he won 83 percent of his first-serve points), he went on to take the second set and kept the momentum going to take the third. Surely this guy was going to realize he had no business playing at this level for a sustained amount of time, right?

Yes, Rosol blinked. He played sloppily in the sixth game of the fourth set and Nadal broke for a 4-2 lead, letting out one of his patented double-lawnmower fist pumps. Nadal broke again to win the set 6-2 and pull even in the match.

But any momentum Nadal had wrenched back with that brutal display of defense was wiped out by one thing he couldn’t control: light. It was 8:45 p.m. when the fifth set was ready to begin and the referee’s office had already announced that they intended to play the match to its conclusion. That meant closing the roof in order to provide adequate lighting to the court. Because of the state-of-the art cooling system that needs to kick into place when the roof is closed, the players left the court and resumed play 30 minutes later.

“I think I played a great fourth set,” Nadal said. “Sure, the stop this time didn’t help me. That’s the sport. That’s it.”

Back on the court for the fifth set, Rosol broke Nadal immediately for a 1-0 lead. The upset watch was on. With the way Rosol was serving and striking the ball, the issue was whether he could hold his nerve. But the guy just got better as the set wore on, hitting shots that had no reply and effectively taking the racket out of Nadal’s hands.

“That’s what happens when you play against a player who is able to hit the ball very hard, hit the ball without thinking and feeling the pressure,” Nadal said. “At the end, when the opponent wants to play like he wanted to play in the fifth, you are in his hands, no?”

Winner after winner, ace after ace (he bombed down 22), Rosol kept his foot on the gas pedal and never let up. Ace. Forehand winner. Ace. Forehand winner. Game. That was the pattern of Rosol’s service games as he tried to protect his lead. The tension seemed to make him hit the ball even harder with every swing until finally he had a chance to serve out the match. Ace. Forehand winner. Ace. Ace. The upset was complete.

Players ranked No. 100 in the world aren’t supposed to do this. But Lukas Rosol did. And we’re all left trying to pick our jaws up off the floor.

From SI.com

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WIMBLEDON 2012: ROGER FEDERER GOES FOR 7th TITLE AND FANS CAMP OUT TO WATCH

June 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

As Wimbledon 2012 sets to tip off at 6:30 am on June 25, Roger Federer has got his eyes on the prize. Roger Federer’s latest is a record equaling seventh Wimbledon title. His love affair with Wimbledon has lasted nearly a decade and it has got to the stage that one of the things he looks forward to most about the event is the chance to have a cup of tea with the chairman before the action begins.

“I cherish those moments,” Federer said. “When I can see the trophy, see the Centre Court with no people inside.

“Go see the chairman and have a relaxed chat, maybe some tea on the balcony, that for me is the favourite part of Wimbledon, next to obviously playing the big matches.”

On this sort of foundation, the romance is built to last but it has not always been this way for one of the game’s greatest ever players.

In fact, only after Federer had his name engraved on the honours board in 2003, did he really appreciate the tournament and its history. “I definitely felt different,” he said of the impact of his straight sets victory against Mark Philippoussis.

Thousands of tennis fans queued up this morning to watch the first day of play at Wimbledon.

Some camped out while others headed to SW19 at the crack of dawn to get tickets for the opening day of the 126th grand slam championships.

Britons will be hoping for a homegrown champion, especially after last night’s disappointment in Euro 2012.

The tournament is also a precursor to SW19′s Olympics appearance – the games’ tennis tournament will be held at the club just three weeks after Wimbledon finishes.

Thousands of people queued today, travelling from across the UK and as far afield as New Zealand and the United States.

Some camped out – Sue Callaghan arrived yesterday morning with a group of friends who come every year to watch the tennis.

The 59-year-old, from Bourton-on-the-Hill in Surrey, said: “We got here at about 10.30am yesterday morning, we managed to get our tents up before the rain.

“I’ve been coming for 39 years, I come every year. We all met here and now we come each year.

“We keep in touch, send Christmas cards, then all arrange to meet up here.”

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