BIG BELTER: Madison Keys on court at Wimbledon. The ninth seed and a quarterfinalist last year advanced to the third round with a win over Kirsten Flipkens yesterday.
Image by: FACUNDO ARRIZABALAGA/EPA
Image by: FACUNDO ARRIZABALAGA/EPA
Madison Keys, the woman tipped as the most likely American successor to the Williams sisters, powered to a 6-4 4-6 6-3 victory against Kirsten Flipkens in the second round of Wimbledon yesterday.
On the same day, the elder Williams sister, Venus, kept her wits about her to down a Greek qualifier.
A time-violation warning, a few spots of rain and the thunderous ground strokes of her rival could not throw Williams off her long-limbed stride as she reached the third round with a 7-5 4-6 6-3 win over Maria Sakkari.
Playing an opponent who was not even aged three when she won the first of her seven grand slam titles at Wimbledon in 2000, Williams proved it was going to take more than determination to topple the eighth seed.
Barring a defeat by an unranked Kim Clijsters at the 2009 US Open, Williams had not lost to a player ranked outside the world's top 100 at a grand slam this century. World No15 Sakkari's hopes of ending that run gathered momentum when she broke the 36-year-old three times in the second set.
But Williams, who dropped her serve in the seventh game of the first set after incurring a time violation warning for switching rackets, was back into her groove in the third set and set up a meeting with Russian Daria Kasatkina.
Her heir apparent, Keys, the ninth seed and a quarterfinalist last year, suffered a second-set blip against the Belgian, and wavered late on having roared into a 5-0 lead. But she managed to nip a Flipkens comeback in the bud and will face Italy's 20th seed Sara Errani or Alize Cornet in the next round. - AFP
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