Venus On Top

Wimbledon Day 5 Women's Wrap: Venus hits top form, Zvonareva beaten

After a relatively mild morning session which saw Caroline Wozniacki whisk into the third round and Maria Sharapova battle through too, Friday afternoon provided considerable excitement in the ladies' singles event with some far from expected results. While the most shocking of all was undoubtedly seeing no.2 seed Vera Zvonareva crash out to 32nd ranked Tsvetana Pironkova in straight sets, the dominant nature of Venus Williams' complete annihilation of talented Spaniard Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez was just as astonishing. Petra Kvitova and Victoria Azarenka restored some semblance of order with contrasting wins, but there was another early exit for a seed with the dancing German Andrea Petkovic beaten in straight sets by the unheralded Ksenia Pervak.

Tsvetana Pironkova, a beaten semi-finalist at last year's Wimbledon at the hands of Vera Zvonareva came into their third round clash with revenge on her mind, and did she ever deliver, thumping the Russian 6-2, 6-3 in just 77 minutes. While the scoreline indicates a washout, the first set ultimately came down to who took her chances with the young Bulgarian going 2/2 on break point conversions while her Russian adversary was 0/6. Pironkova tightened things up considerably in the second and remarkably quite literally produced an error free performance as she hammered 10 winners and no unforced errors to book her place in the fourth round.

Awaiting Pironkova in the last 16 is the person she beat in the quarter-finals here last year, Venus Williams. The 5-time Wimbledon champion hammered 21 winners en route to thrashing Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez, 6-0, 6-2 in just over an hour. Martinez Sanchez did herself no favours by gifting the elder Williams 16 free points, but Venus did not really need any assistance on a day on which she lost just 2 points on her first serve all match.

Also in the same quarter of the draw is 8th seed Petra Kvitova, who eased her way past Italian Roberta Vinci 6-3, 6-3. The young left-hander is likely to face considerably stiffer resistance from Belgium's Yanina Wickmayer in the fourth round. Wickmayer beat Svetlana Kuznetsova in three sets earlier today.

The highest ranked seed left alive in the bottom half of the draw is the young Belarusian Victoria Azarenka, seeded 4th. Azarenka had the rain to thank for her three set win against the lovely Daniela Hantuchova. The ladies split the opening couple of sets between them and the momentum was truly with the Slovakian as she was serving up a break at 2-1 in the decider when the weather gods intervened. Azarenka came out of the interval all guns blazing and rattled off 5 games in a row to steal the match 6-3, 3-6, 6-2. She will next face the dangerous floater Nadia Petrova in the fourth round. Petrova beat Kateryna Bondarenko in straight sets 6-3, 6-3 in the morning.

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