Serena wins battle of Williams sisters

On what has been described as ‘Manic Monday’ by tennis fans and analysts, yesterday saw the last 32 male and female players in the world take to the stage for the last 16 spots in the quarterfinal stage of the ongoing Wimbledon.

In the highly-anticipated clash of the top sisters in the game, Venus and Serena Williams, who faced off for the 26th time in their careers, and the younger Williams came out on top, winning in straight sets 6-4, 6-3.

The sisters have 16 Wimbledon titles between them, both singles and doubles, but Serena now leads their head to head 15-11 and is still on course to completing her ‘Serena Slam’. Describing the match as a difficult one, because ‘It is never easy to play your own sister,’ Serena said she is happy one of them got to this stage. Serena has struggled on this surface in recent years, falling in early stages the last couple of years.

This year has, however, been different for the 33-year-old American, who has won both slams of the first half of the year. If she wins Wimbledon, she would become the oldest woman to win a slam; it would also be her 21st singles grand slam. Richard Gasquet of France was able to banish his demons of last year, swatting aside familiar foe Nick Kyrgios of Australia.

In what almost looked like deja-vu, Kyrgios saved two match points to take the match to a fourth set . Last year, Gasquet was two sets up and had nine match points and still squandered them all as Kyrgios won in five sets. This time, however, he composed himself and closed out the match with a double fault from the Kyrgios racquet. Vasek Pospisil was a winner over Viktor Troicki and he would face Richard Gasquet next.