Tennis
The Latest: Venus Williams wins 2nd round Wimbledon match
Tennis

The Latest: Venus Williams wins 2nd round Wimbledon match

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 8:48 p.m. ET

LONDON (AP) The Latest on Wimbledon (all times local):

3:25 p.m.

Five-time Wimbledon champion Venus Williams won another match at the All England Club, beating Greek qualifier Maria Sakkari 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 to reach the third round.

The eighth-seeded Williams, at 36 the oldest player seeded in the top eight at a major tournament since Martina Navratilova at Wimbledon in 1994, had 38 winners but 31 unforced errors.

ADVERTISEMENT

Williams won the last of her five Wimbledon titles in 2008. Since 2011, she has not been past the fourth round.

---

3:10 p.m.

Milos Raonic advanced to the third round at Wimbledon by beating Andreas Seppi 7-6 (5), 6-4, 6-2.

The sixth-seeded Canadian, who reached the semifinals at the All England Club in 2014, had 25 aces in the match.

Raonic has been working with John McEnroe since the grass-court season started. He reached the final at Queen's prior to the start of Wimbledon, losing to Andy Murray in the final. He is 6-1 on grass this year.

---

12:40 p.m.

British player Dan Evans made it to the third round at Wimbledon for the first time, beating 30th-seeded Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine 7-6 (6), 6-4, 6-1.

Evans entered the Grand Slam with a 0-3 career record at Wimbledon but has won two straight matches to equal his best performance at a major, at the U.S. Open in 2013.

Dolgopolov, a 2011 Australian Open quarterfinalist, was in the second round at the All England Club for the fifth straight year. He reached the third round in 2013 and `14, but has never been beyond the first week.

---

12:30 p.m.

After a four-hour contest between two qualifiers that went to 26 games in the fifth set, the match ended on a double-fault.

Australia's 248th-ranked Matthew Barton fell forward onto the grass in relief and exhaustion after 793rd-ranked Albano Olivetti's second serve hit the top of the net and flew wide.

Barton came away with a 6-7 (9), 7-6 (5), 6-3, 6-7 (5), 14-12 win on Thursday in the completion of a first-round match that resumed at 3-3 in the fifth set after previous rain delays.

Olivetti lost despite hitting 56 aces. Barton had 32 aces.

Olivetti also piled up 108 winners, compared to 88 for Barton.

Barton earned a second-round match against another marathon man, John Isner. The American beat Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon in 2010 in a match that went to 70-68 in the fifth set and lasted more than 11 hours over three days.

---

11:30 a.m.

Andy Murray aims to join Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer in the third round as Wimbledon scrambles to clear a backlog of matches caused by rain delays.

Play on the outside courts started 30 minutes earlier than usual on Thursday under cloudy skies, with some rain forecast for later in the day.

Murray, the 2013 champion who is seeded No. 2, was set to play the second match on Centre Court against 76th-ranked Yen-hsun Lu of Taiwan.

Other men in action include No. 5 Kei Nishikori, No. 6 Milos Raonic and No. 7 Richard Gasquet.

Among the women, French Open champion and No. 2 Garbine Muguruza is set to play on Court 1 against Jama Cepelova.

More than a dozen players are still stuck in the opening round because of rain delays.

share


Get more from Tennis Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more

in this topic