Wimbledon: Serena Wins 300th Slam, Moves To 4th Round

Defending champion Serena Williams did not

need to work too hard to earn her 300th

career Grand Slam match win and move into

the fourth round at Wimbledon,

overwhelming 43rd -ranked Annika Beck of

Germany 6-3, 6- 0 on Sunday. The victory

pushed Williams past Chrissie Evert into

second for career Slam victories in the Open

era .

Williams trails only Martina Navratilova, who

went 306- 49 in her career . Williams said she

wasn ’ t aware of the milestone until she was

asked about it in a postmatch interview .

“ Was it ? Cool. Oh , nice, ” she said with a

laugh . “ I had no idea .

That’ s awesome, right ? That’ s good , right ? I

think that ’ s a lot of matches . ” It took all of 51

minutes at Centre Court for Williams to

advance . Williams , who has won six of her 21

Grand Slam titles at the All England Club ,

compiled a 25 -2 edge in winners .

For only the fourth time in Wimbledon’ s 139 -

year history, play was scheduled on the

middle Sunday, which is the traditional rest

day , because of rain delays in the first week

that caused a backlog of matches . All 22 , 000

tickets for Sunday’ s play were snapped up in

27 minutes when they went on sale online

Saturday .

“ Obviously I love having that Sunday off, but

I ’ m a little behind in my matches , so I guess

I had to play an extra day , ” Williams said .

After falling an early break behind at 2- 1,

Williams won 11 of the final 12 games and 24

of the second set’ s 28 points. She finished the

first set with one of her seven aces and

served out the match at love .

“ I still want to get out to a little bit of a faster

start, ” Williams said . “But I was really

focused and calm today . ” The No . 1- ranked

Williams improved to 300- 42 at major

tournaments . Williams will next face two-

time major champion Svetlana Kuznetsova,

who put aside a warning for getting coached

and erased a big deficit in the third set to

edge 18th - seeded Sloane Stephens 6-7 ( 1) , 6- 2,

8- 6. Kuznetsova, who won the 2004 US Open

and 2009 French Open, needed almost 2 ½

hours to get past Stephens .

All Credits : New telegram