After what seemed a routine opening set against the unseeded British player Heather Watson, Williams soon found herself on the brink of what would have been a massive third-round upset on Centre Court as Watson won the second set and then served for the match at 5-4 in the third.
But Williams, the world’s No. 1 player, again found a way to wriggle free and keep alive her quest for her first calendar-year Grand
Slam.
Williams’s 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 victory put her into the fourth round of Wimbledon, where she will face her older sister Venus, who defeated Aleksandra Krunic of Serbia, 6-3, 6-2, in a match that generated much less suspense on Court 2.
It will be the first Grand Slam singles match between the Williams sisters since the 2009 Wimbledon final, won by Serena Williams in straight sets. It will be their first match in any tournament since Venus Williams beat Serena Williams in three sets in the semifinals of the Rogers Cup in Montreal last August.
“She’s in better form than I am, so I think she has a little bit of an advantage going into that match,” Serena Williams said in an interview with the BBC immediately after her escape against Watson. “But at least one of us will be in the quarterfinal, so it will be good.”
For about an hour, it seemed that both Williams sisters would advance to the fourth round with little drama, but that was before Watson, a 23-year-old ranked 59th in the world, broke Serena Williams at 4-4 in the second set and then held serve to even the match at a set apiece.
She then broke Williams’s serve, widely considered the most fearsome weapon in the women’s game, twice to take a 3-0 lead and had points on her own serve to go ahead by 4-0.
“She should have won the match at this point,” Serena Williams said. “She was up two breaks and playing really well.”
But threatening Williams and defeating Williams are two very different psychological propositions, as Williams has proved throughout her long, remarkable career and underscored in 2015.
Source : nytimes.com
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