Saturday, June 30, 2012

2012 Wimbledon Day 6: Multiple Marathon Day

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AP
Day 6 of 2012 Wimbledon was pretty much upset free, with 2011 Champion Petra Kvitova(4) demolishing fellow lefty Varvara Lepchenko, Serena Williams(6) finding a way to win against a tough Chinese opponent (former Wimbledon semifinalist Zheng Jie) and Victoria Azarenka(2) winning easily. Other notable winners of third round matches to reach the second week were Tamira Paszek, Ana Ivanovic, Francesca Schiavone and Yaroslava Shvedova.

On the men's side 3-time finalist Andy Roddick lost to David Ferrer in 4 sets while Jo-Wilfried Tsonga(5), Juan Martin del Potro(9), Marin Cilic(16) and two Americans, Mardy Fish(10) and unseeded Brian Baker, advanced to the round of 16 on Monday. The astonishing Lukas Roso who defeated World #2 Rafael Nadal in stunning fashion on Thursday lost pretty meekly to Phillip Kohlschreiber.

Meanwhile, Andy Murray(4) was able to get past Marcos Baghdatis 7-5 3-6 7-5 6-1  a few minutes after Wimbledon's curfew at 11pm local time which should have forced the cessation of the match.

Match of the Day: 
S. Williams USA (6) d. J. Zheng CHN (25) 6-7(5) 6-2 9-7. Serena Williams blasted a career-high 23 aces but was unable to overpower her opponent with groundstrokes. When the rallies went beyond four strokes Zheng won the majority of the points. In fact, despite not having a very powerful serve, Zheng was able to hold serve very easily for the entirety of the first set, with Serena continually failing to impose her will on her opponent's service games. The result was a tiebreaker in which Zheng had one set point and capitalized on her opportunity. In the second set Serena started connecting on her groundstrokes and finally broke Zheng twice to win the set easily. In the 3rd set Serena continued her serving clinic and took a long time to get into Zheng's service games. Luckily for her, there's no tiebreak in the final set at Wimbledon so, in her longest grand slam match in a very long time, Serena was able to break and then serve it out to win.

M. Cilic CRO (16) d. S. Querrey USA 7-6(6) 6-4 6-7(2) 6-7(3) 17-15. The second longest match in Wimbledon history (5 hours 31 minutes) featured two 6'6" hard-hitting, big-serving players with pretty similar games. It was high quality tennis throughout, but Cilic had many more chances, including serving for the match at 6-5 in the 4th set and was only 2 for 6 on break points in the 5th set and 5 of 16 for the entire match. Cilic-Querrey was less than half as long as the Isner-Mahut 11 hour, 5 minutes of play over 3 days.

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