Serena Williams wins as seeds tumble at Wimbledon
Serena Williams has halted the flow of upsets in the ladies singles quarter-finals at Wimbledon, defeating Na Li 7-5, 6-3 on centre court today.
While the ninth seed staged a valiant fight against the tournament’s top seed, some vital lapses of concentration by Li coupled with Williams’ own formidable serve ensured Li was always going to struggle to extinguish Serena’s title defence on the day that two of her most likely challengers – sister Venus and US Open champion Kim Clijsters – were handed their marching orders by lower ranked opponents.
Li may have entered this match having won just one of the five matches she’s played against the world No. 1 (in Stuttgart in 2008) but also safe in the knowledge Serena has struggled to shake her in all of their previous matches, most recently in the semi-finals of the Australian Open where the match was decided in two tiebreak sets.
And so it proved once again early in the match on centre court at the All England Club with Li refusing to take a backward step against the powerful blows that were being delivered from the other side of the net; matching them with hard-hitting and attacking ground strokes of her own as very little separated the pair in the rallies during the opening set.
However, with the top seed’s serve looking nigh on impenetrable– Serena didn’t even concede a point in her opening two service games and was able routinely call on an ace to short circuit any challenge her opponent might begin to mount against her serve – it seemed that if either player was going to secure an invaluable break, Williams was the more likely to do it against the more vulnerable serve of her Chinese opponent.
To that end, it was Serena who gained the first chance to break serve, an opportunity that presented itself in the fifth game of the match, but the ninth seed called on some penetrating shots to save the double break point chance and hold serve for the third time in the match.
That opportunity may have eluded Serena, but when Li tightened up an served consecutive double faults to turn what had been a 40-0 lead to the world No. 12 in the 11th game of the match into deuce and then a break point to Williams, the defending champion was able to convert and set up the opportunity to serve for the set, which she did with consummate ease.
It was another lapse on serve by Li that handed Serena the break in the fifth game of the second set, with the 2006 Wimbledon quarter-finalist netting a straightforward forehand to gift Williams some breathing space.
Two games later a double fault by Li on break point looked to have effectively sealed the match for Serena, but Li wasn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet, scrambling to create the double break point chance against the defending champion’s serve, and then hitting a blistering passing shot on the second of them to claw back one of the breaks of serve.
That resistance, as crowd pleasing as it was, proved short-lived as two wide forehands by Li – one on either sideline – in the next game sent Serena through to the semi-finals after just one hour and 19 minutes on court.
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