Serena batters Pavlyuchenkova to join Venus in semis

USA’s Serena Williams celebrates winning her match against Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova REUTERS

LONDON, (Reuters): Serena Williams battered Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-4 6-4 in the quarter-finals at Wimbledon on Tuesday, seizing on moments of weakness from the Russian to ram home her advantage.

The defending champion, seeking an elusive 22nd grand slam to equal Steffi Graf’s open-era record, took the first set after finding a chink in her opponent’s serving armoury in the ninth game.

Pavlyuchenkova, the 21st seed, went for her shots but never found a way to counter the Williams attack. Nerves told again in the same game of the second set, where a series of errors allowed the American to break and then serve for the match.

The world No.1 wrapped up the tie on her second match point with a 123 mph ace for 11 in total.

Williams joins her sister Venus in the semi-finals on Thursday where she will meet another Russian, Elena Vesnina.

“We are playing doubles later so we are just so glad to both get through to the semi-finals,” Williams said.

Tsonga confident he can beat Murray in last eight

Reuters: Jo-Wilfried Tsonga said he was confident he could beat Andy Murray in the Wimbledon quarter-finals after he won his fourth-round match when fellow Frenchman Richard Gasquet retired with a back injury on Monday.

Tsonga, who clinched a marathon match at the weekend against John Isner 19-17 in the final set, was 4-2 up in the first set against number seven seed Gasquet when the match was ended.

The 31-year-old will play British number two seed Andy Murray in the last eight - and said the tie held no fear for him after the epic Isner encounter.

“That’s why tennis is great. Two days ago I was 5-5 in the third set, 15-40 against me, two sets to love down, and I came back. I’m still alive in this tournament,” Tsonga, seeded 12, told reporters.

“Everything can happen in tennis. I’m very confident of my capacity to play great tennis and beat players like Andy.”

Gasquet said he had first felt pain in his back towards the end of his previous match, against Albert Ramos-Vinolas.

“This morning when I warmed up, it was okay. Then during my match, I felt something wrong and I couldn’t move after that.”

He said he was not sure exactly what kind of injury he had suffered, adding: “There are tests to come.”

Kerber outguns Halep to reach second Wimbledon semi

Reuters: Germany’s Angelique Kerber outslugged Romania’s Simona Halep in a quarter-final of the counter-punchers at Wimbledon on Tuesday, shading a compelling two-set match that featured 13 breaks of serve.

The German, who reached her second semi-final at the All England Club as she bids to add another grand slam title to the maiden major she won in Australia in January, broke Halep five times in the first set of her 7-5 7-6(2) win.

The Romanian, herself a Wimbledon semi-finalist in 2014, conceded the set on a double fault.

Fourth seed Kerber -- like Halep not one of the sport’s bigger servers -- was broken four times in her first six service games as the pair counter-attacked, stretching each other’s defences with a mix of pinpoint topspins, slices and dropshots.

Upping her game a notch from Monday’s fourth-round display in which she lost just four games in beating Japan’s Misaki Doi, Kerber began to dominate the long baseline rallies as the second set progressed, forcing Halep to chase down ball after ball.

As the Romanian, hitting cross-court into left-hander Kerber’s forehand whenever possible, began to tire, the German had a chance to close things out at 5-4.

But with a captivated Centre Court crowd willing the Romanian to find the energy to take the match to a final set, Kerber again dropped serve as part of a sequence of four consecutive breaks.

The German regrouped to sail through the tiebreak, however, on a succession of Halep errors to set up a semi-final clash with eighth seed Venus Williams.