Wimbledon: Serena wins 300th Slam, moves to 4th round

Defending champion Serena Williams did not need to work too hard to earn her 300th career Grand Slam match win and move into the fourth round at Wimbledon, overwhelming 43rd-ranked Annika Beck of Germany 6-3, 6-0 on Sunday.

The victory pushed Williams past Chrissie Evert into second for career Slam victories in the Open era. Williams trails only Martina Navratilova, who went 306-49 in her career.

Williams said she wasn’t aware of the milestone until she was asked about it in a postmatch interview.

“Was it? Cool. Oh, nice,” she said with a laugh. “I had no idea. That’s awesome, right? That’s good, right? I think that’s a lot of matches.”

It took all of 51 minutes at Centre Court for Williams to advance. Williams, who has won six of her 21 Grand Slam titles at the All England Club, compiled a 25-2 edge in winners.

For only the fourth time in Wimbledon’s 139-year history, play was scheduled on the middle Sunday, which is the traditional rest day, because of rain delays in the first week that caused a backlog of matches. All 22,000 tickets for Sunday’s play were snapped up in 27 minutes when they went on sale online Saturday.

“Obviously I love having that Sunday off, but I’m a little behind in my matches, so I guess I had to play an extra day,” Williams said.

After falling an early break behind at 2-1, Williams won 11 of the final 12 games and 24 of the second set’s 28 points. She finished the first set with one of her seven aces and served out the match at love.

“I still want to get out to a little bit of a faster start,” Williams said. “But I was really focused and calm today.”

The No. 1-ranked Williams improved to 300-42 at major tournaments.

Williams will next face two-time major champion Svetlana Kuznetsova, who put aside a warning for getting coached and erased a big deficit in the third set to edge 18th-seeded Sloane Stephens 6-7 (1), 6-2, 8-6.

Kuznetsova, who won the 2004 US Open and 2009 French Open, needed almost 2½ hours to get past Stephens.

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now