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Ah, the Middle Sunday. Normally a day of rest and reflection (or in the case of the Ramsay household, laundry). But not this year.
This year the Grounds were awash with lucky people who had the rare chance to see an extra day of play at the All England Club.
These same souls wanted a piece of the action; they wanted to see what we had all witnessed in the first, remarkable six days of The Championships. The rest of us, though, wanted a little sanity, a little normality. After all, the earth was still trembling slightly with the aftershocks of Novak Djokovic’s departure on Saturday – we all love a good upset but they don’t half knock you sideways when they happen.
Serena Williams, then, would surely provide a safe pair of hands on Centre Court. The defending champion, the No.1 seed, the No.1 player in the world – Serena would be our rock. Sure enough, she delivered a 6-3, 6-0 win over Annika Beck to record her 300th Grand Slam match win on the eve of her 300th week as the world No.1. And when a gentleman with a microphone pointed this fact out to her, Serena was stunned. “Cool!” she gushed. “Nice. That’s awesome. That’s a lot of matches.”
Even so, Serena has not been having it all her own way of late. The Misses Kerber and Muguruza beat her in the finals of the Australian and French Opens respectively. Serena did not drop a point on serve on the second set and only allowed Beck to win four points in total during those last six games as she swept to victory.
Now, though, life gets more complicated. In the fourth round, she must find a way to get past Svetlana Kuznetsova. The 31-year-old Russian was on the brink of defeat against Sloane Stephens but dragged herself back to win 6-7(1), 6-2, 8-6. Warned for receiving coaching during the second set, Kuznetsova was fuming. She argued her case with Marijana Veljovic in the chair at the time, she argued her case at the change of ends. She was happy to argue her case until the cows came home but it made no difference.
Still, it may just have sparked the competitive fire in her as she ran away with the second set and then hung on by her fingernails as Stephens served for the match at 5-3 in the third. That storm weathered, the former French and US Open champion hung on for dear life, broke for a 7-6 lead, fended off a break point and then finally, after two-and-a-half hours, converted her first match point.
Stronger than Beck, with more weapons than Beck and far, far more experienced than Beck, Kuznetsova could be just the sort of foe Serena does not want to see on the other side of the net. Particularly when she has not had a day off to do her laundry Victoria Azarenka added to the misery beating her in the final in Indian Wells and it was not until May that she finally got her hands on a trophy (it was in Rome and she beat Madison Keys to collect it).
Even here, she has looked a little shaky on occasion and dropping a set to Christina McHale did little to settle the nerves. But fortunately for the defending champion, Beck, the world No.43 from Germany, never really looked likely to cause an upset.
Small – by tennis standards – at 5ft 7in, Beck is fleet of foot and a nimble mover. Her game is neat and tidy but she does not have any great weapon. True: speed was one of Lleyton Hewitt’s greatest weapons but even he found that it could only take him so far against the power houses of the game. And Beck was taking on the juggernaut of women’s tennis in Serena. And before anyone complains, by juggernaut we do not mean a 16-wheeler; we mean “a huge, powerful, and overwhelming force” as defined by the dictionary.
As is so often the case in these matches, everything depended on Serena. The points that Beck was winning in the first set were, for the most part earned on the back of a Serena error (14 in the first set and none in the second). But once the top seed had loosened up, settled her nerves (yes, even serial champions still get the odd butterfly flapping around in the tum) and cut out the mistakes, Beck did not stand a chance.
Serena did not drop a point on serve on the second set and only allowed Beck to win four points in total during those last six games as she swept to victory.
Now, though, life gets more complicated. In the fourth round, she must find a way to get past Svetlana Kuznetsova. The 31-year-old Russian was on the brink of defeat against Sloane Stephens but dragged herself back to win 6-7(1), 6-2, 8-6.
Warned for receiving coaching during the second set, Kuznetsova was fuming. She argued her case with Marijana Veljovic in the chair at the time, she argued her case at the change of ends.
She was happy to argue her case until the cows came home but it made no difference.
Still, it may just have sparked the competitive fire in her as she ran away with the second set and then hung on by her fingernails as Stephens served for the match at 5-3 in the third.
That storm weathered, the former French and US Open champion hung on for dear life, broke for a 7-6 lead, fended off a break point and then finally, after two-and-a-half hours, converted her first match point.
Stronger than Beck, with more weapons than Beck and far, far more experienced than Beck, Kuznetsova could be just the sort of foe Serena does not want to see on the other side of the net. Particularly when she has not had a day off to do her laundry.
