Venus Williams won her second round match against Kamiko Date-Krumm in a three-set thriller, continuing a strong run in her return to Grand Slam play. As Cindy Boren reported :
Venus Williams held off Kimiko Date-Krumm, advancing to the third round at Wimbledon with a 6-7 (6-8), 6-3, 8-6 victory today.
Williams is playing in a Grand Slam tournament for the first time since withdrawing from the Australian Open because of injury and there is some rust on her game.
“It’s just important to play each point and to just keep competing, keep battling,” Williams said after the nearly three-hour match. “I feel like I’m playing better than [at Wimbledon warm-up] Eastbourne. I feel like my movement is a lot better and surprisingly I’m not feeling any pain from my injury right now. That’s more than I expected.”
Date-Krumm, playing like anything but a 40-year-old, won the first set 7-6 (8-6) after sprinting out to a 5-1 lead. Williams, playing in her first major since being force to withdraw from the Australian Open because of injury, took the second set 6-3.
Williams won won in straight sets Monday and, because this is Venus Williams we’re talking about, it should be pointed out that she wore a version of the same outfit she wore Monday. “It’s a jumper,” Williams said Monday. “Jumpers are very now, kind of trendy. The back is kind of, I don’t know, like a cutout or a peek-a-boo. I’m always trying to do something different and fun.”
The match was played with the roof closed because of rain.
Venus’s sister Serena also made her return to Grand Slam play after a year of injuries and health problems had sidelined the tennis star. As AP explained:
Defending champion Serena Williams reached the second round at Wimbledon by defeating Aravane Rezai of France 6-3, 3-6, 6-1.
Williams was out of action for nearly a year after foot surgery and blood clots in her lungs. She played her first competitive matches since winning Wimbledon at Eastbourne last week.
The seventh-seeded American has won four titles at the All England Club and is one of the favorites this year despite her long absence from the tour.
Against Rezai, Williams lost the opening two games but then won five straight to take control of the first set. After losing the second set, she broke to take a 3-1 lead and held on for victory.
The chief executive of the All England Lawn and Tennis Club made news when he complained that some female players were grunting too loudly. As Cindy Boren reported:
Ian Ritchie, the chief executive of the All England Lawn and Tennis Club would like women tennis players to stop with the grunting already.
Ritchie, in an interview with the Telegraph, that officials would “would prefer to see less grunting” and pointed out that individual playerss can do something about it.
“The players have an ability to complain about it, if one player is grunting too much and the other player doesn’t like it and it is distracting, they can complain to the umpire.
“We have discussed it with the tours and we believe it is helpful to reduce the amount of grunting.”
Although spectators may find the noise off-putting, “we are one tournament in a global circuit,” Ritchie said. “But we have made our views clear and we would like to see less of it.”
Victoria Azarenka of Belarus, a serial grunter and Wimbledon semifinalist in 2009, drew attention for the volume and length of her wails Monday in a match against Slovakia’s Magdalena Rybarikova. She hit 95 decibels on the grunt-o-meter and her shrieks exceeded 1.5 seconds. (She advanced to the second round when Rybarikova retired because of injury.) Maria Sharapova holds the record, according to the Telegraph, for the loudest wail, hitting 105 decibels in 2009.
“People can do whatever they want, but I hope they can respect all the players who grunt, which are about 70 per cent of the whole tour,” Azarenka said. “I have been doing it since I was 10 years old. I wasn’t really strong and that was what helped me to accelerate more, to put more power to the ball.
“I cannot change it, that’s what helps me to play. I have to keep going with the thing that helps me play.”
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