UPDATE:
LONDON (AP) — Leave all the chatter about Serena Williams’ pursuit of her 22nd major singles trophy to others.
Williams and her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, do not discuss that number.
“We don’t talk about it all. Zero,” Mouratoglou said Tuesday at Wimbledon after watching Williams win her first-round match.
Why is that?
“Because there is nothing to talk about. We have a Grand Slam (title) to win, and that’s what’s most important. We don’t talk about the reward,” he said. “We talk about the work we have to do.”
That is going to include some extra time spent fine-tuning the top-seeded Williams’ serve after she delivered five double-faults, including three in one game, and faced five break points during an uneven 6-2, 6-4 victory over Amra Sadikovic, a Swiss qualifier ranked 148th and making her Grand Slam debut.
“It’s very rare that everything works perfectly the first round. It’s one of the things that were not good today, so we’re going to work on it,” Mouratoglou said. “But it’s not a big deal. I don’t think it’s a big deal.”
Didn’t take long for the first rain of this year’s tournament, which cut short action in the early evening and limited play to the main stadium, the only venue with a roof at the All England Club. In all, 14 matches were suspended in progress and 16 were postponed altogether.
Of the matches that did conclude, zero seeded players lost.
Winners included No. 2 Andy Murray, the 2013 champion, in the first all-British men’s match at Wimbledon since 2001; No. 4 Stan Wawrinka, who eliminated 18-year-old American Taylor Fritz and now faces 2009 U.S. Open champion Juan Martin del Potro, participating in his first Grand Slam tournament in 2½ years after three operations on his left wrist; No. 7 Richard Gasquet, No. 12 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and No. 15 Nick Kyrgios.
Among the top women, No. 6 Roberta Vinci — who stunned Williams at the U.S. Open last year, ending the American’s bid for a calendar-year Grand Slam — beat Alison Riske of the U.S. 6-2, 5-7, 6-3; No. 13 Svetlana Kuznetsova defeated unseeded Caroline Wozniacki, a former No. 1 who hasn’t won a match at a major in 2016; and No. 27 CoCo Vandeweghe of the U.S. had little trouble getting past Kateryna Bondarenko 6-2, 7-6 (3) under the roof in the day’s last match.
Since earning her sixth Wimbledon championship and 21st Grand Slam title a year ago, Williams has gone 18-3 at majors, with the losses coming in the U.S. Open semifinals, the Australian Open final and the French Open final.
That led some to surmise that Williams has been beset by nerves as she seeks No. 22, which would equal Steffi Graf’s Open-era record (Margaret Court holds the all-time mark of 24).
Williams dismissed the notion of a mental stumbling block.
“I think more or less about winning Australia. I think about winning the French Open. Didn’t happen. I think about winning Wimbledon,” she said. “I don’t necessarily think about winning ’22.'”
Then, in what sounded like a reference to various health issues that have put her in the hospital and kept her off the tour for months — blood clots on her lungs in 2010, for example — Williams continued: “Mentally I’ve been further down than anyone can be. Well, maybe not anyone, but I’ve been pretty low. There’s nothing … mentally too hard for me.”
With her mother sitting in Centre Court’s Royal Box, Williams trailed 15-40 in Tuesday’s opening game, then won 13 consecutive points and grabbed a 3-0 lead. In the second set, Williams made four unforced errors in one game to get broken and fall behind 2-1. But she broke right back.
When the players met at the net after Williams’ return winner ended the match, they embraced like old friends.
Turns out that was Sadikovic’s idea. She was a bit awe-struck by the occasion — and rightly so.
Sadikovic quit playing tennis two years ago, because she wasn’t enjoying life on tour and had financial problems. After more than a year off, giving tennis lessons, she returned. So while Sadikovic knew she’d have a better chance to win against pretty much any other opponent, she was thrilled to play Williams.
“I always looked up to Serena, because she’s like a beast, but in a positive way,” Sadikovic said. “I always asked myself the question: How does it feel … to play the best player in the world?”
Now she knows.
“I just wanted to hug her, to be honest,” Sadikovic said. “And I asked her. She was like, ‘Yeah, sure!'”
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Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich
ORIGINAL STORY:
LONDON (AP) — The Latest on Wimbledon (all times local):
2:30 p.m.
Serena Williams began her Wimbledon title defense with a comfortable but tentative win over Swiss qualifier Amra Sadikovic, winning 6-2, 6-4 on Centre Court. Williams won the final point on a line call challenge.
The six-time champion barely served any better than the 148th-ranked Sadikovic, who was making her main draw debut in a Grand Slam at the age of 27.
Williams’ serve was shaky, she was broken once, and hit more unforced errors. But in her first match since her loss in the French Open final to Garbine Muguruza, Williams advanced to a second-round meeting with fellow American Christina McHale.
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2:15 p.m.
Back on the same No. 2 Court where his Wimbledon campaign imploded last year, Nick Kyrgios behaved and beat Radek Stepanek 6-4, 6-3, 6-7 (9), 6-1 to open his latest run at the All England Club on Tuesday.
The match really got interesting only when Kyrgios tried to finish it in the third set. He was broken serving for the match at 5-4, and was 5-2 down in the tiebreaker before squandering two match points and losing it. Kyrgios was warned for an audible obscenity in the changeover, and took out his frustration on Stepanek by rolling through the fourth set.
Stepanek, trying at 37 to become the oldest man to win a Grand Slam match since Jimmy Connors at the 1992 U.S. Open, didn’t serve well enough and was always under pressure.
Kyrgios was a Wimbledon quarterfinalist on debut in 2014, and departed in the fourth round last year in a loss which included a code violation for swearing and unsportsmanlike conduct against the umpire.
He’s seeded to meet Andy Murray in the fourth round.
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2:05 p.m.
French seeds Richard Gasquet and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga moved into the second round of Wimbledon with straight-set wins.
No. 7 Gasquet swept past Britain’s Aljaz Bedene 6-3, 6-4, 6-3, while No. 12 Tsonga got past Spain’s Inigo Cervantes 6-4, 7-6 (5), 6-4.
Gasquet reached the Wimbledon semifinals last year, while Tsonga made it to the semis in 2011 and 2012.
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1:10 p.m.
Leave it to showman Nick Kyrgrios to pull off a shot like this.
The Australian hit a between-the-legs shot — a “tweener’ — from behind the baseline that sailed over Radek Stepanek’s head at the net and dropped in for a perfect lob winner.
The shot came in the opening game of third set, with Kyrgios already up two sets to love.
Two years ago at Wimbledon, Kyrgios hit a tweener for a winning drop shot in his upset victory over Rafael Nadal.
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12:30 p.m.
Nick Kyrgios has grabbed the early advantage in his intriguing battle of the generations against Radek Stepanek in the opening round of Wimbledon.
The 21-year-old Australian took the first set 6-4 against the 37-year-old Stepanek, who is bidding to become the oldest man to win a Grand Slam match since Jimmy Connors reached the second round of the 1992 U.S. Open at the age of 40.
Kyrgios, who reached the quarterfinals here in 2014, went up 4-1 before Stepanek fought back to 4-4. Kyrgios then held for 5-4 and broke for t
he set, and raced out to a 3-0 lead in the second set.
Stepanek is making his 14th Wimbledon appearance. He made it to the quarterfinals back in 2006.
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11 a.m.
Serena Williams and Andy Murray both face potentially easy opening matches against lowly ranked opponents on Day 2 at Wimbledon.
Defending women’s champion and six-time winner Williams opens play on Centre Court against 148th-ranked Swiss qualifier Amra Sadikovic, making her first appearance in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament.
Since winning last year’s title, Williams has come up short in the majors, losing in the semifinals at the U.S. Open and finals of the Australian and French Opens. She needs one more Grand Slam championship to equal Steffi Graf’s Open-era record of 22 titles.
Murray, the 2013 Wimbledon champion, will be up second on Centre Court on Tuesday against Liam Broady, a British wild-card entry ranked No. 235. It’s the first all-British men’s meeting at Wimbledon since 2001 and first at a Grand Slam since 2006.
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(Photo Source: AP)
