- Wimbledon
Untouchable Serena blasts into third round
Serena Williams continued her quest for a sixth Wimbledon singles crown with a 6-1 6-1 demolition of South Africa's Chanelle Scheepers to reach the third round.
The match lasted just 49 minutes on Court 1, with Williams serving eight aces and 26 winners compared to Scheepers managing to win just 25 points in the entire match.
Williams exited the French Open at the second round phase last month and admitted she did not want the same fate to befall her in SW19. "It is tough for me, every week I am always the favourite and that can be pressure, but I can deal with it," she told the BBC.
"I felt OK today," Williams said later. "I just had a goal and trying to do better each day. You know, I don't want to feel great necessarily right now because hopefully I have several more matches I can play. But the goal for me is just to feel a little better every day."
Alize Cornet of France will now face Williams in the third round with a 6-4 5-7 6-3 victory over Petra Cetkovska. It matches Cornet's career-best performance at Wimbledon, having only reached the third round for the first time last year at her seventh attempt.
Cornet beat Williams earlier this year in the Dubai semi-finals.
"Cornet, she does everything good," Williams said when asked about the upcoming match. "That's why she was able to get a good win off of me. She never gives up, she's a big fighter. She gets a lot of balls back.
"But I'm ready. It's time for me to step up my game and do what I know I can do and do what I'm best at."
Maria Sharapova, champion at SW19 a decade ago, is through to the third round having only lost four games in the tournament thus far. She beat Timea Bacsinszky 6-2 6-1 in one hour on No.1 Court.
Elsewhere, Ana Ivanovic turned the tables on Jie Zheng, who beat her at Wimbledon in 2008, with a 6-4 6-0 win over the former semi-finalist.
Ivanovic next faces last year's runner-up Sabine Lisicki, who beat Karolina Pliskova 6-3 7-5.
After a tight first set, Eugenie Bouchard closed out a 7-5 6-1 win against Silvia Soler-Espinosa to set up a third-round meeting with Andrea Petkovic, who beat Irina-Camelia Begu 6-4 3-6 6-1.