World No. 1 Maria Sharapova of Russia has cruised into the 4th round of the 2012 Wimbledon Championships with a win over No. 62 Su Wei Hsieh from Taiwan 6-1, 6-4.
It wasn’t as easy, however, as the score indicates. After an easy 1st set, Maria had to rally from 4-2 down in the 2nd set to pull out the win.
After the match, Maria said: “I faced her many times in the juniors and she used to be a nightmare for me because she used to slice and drop shot on clay. I was like, ‘Where did she learn how to play tennis like that? Uses both hands, switches racquets.’ We had real battles in the juniors. I hadn’t played her since then, but I knew her game really well. I don’t think she had time to do all of that today on grass. If I’m hitting a hard shot, I don’t think she has time to create, which is something she really likes to do. That’s her game, hitting a lot of drop shots and slices and getting people kind of crazy.”
An interesting stat is that Maria is now 7-0 in her career in third round matches at Wimbledon, not losing a set in any of those matches.
Su-Wie fell to 0-3 against Top 10 players, never winning a set in those matches.
In the 4th round on Monday, Maria will play 22-year-old No. 15 seed Sabine Lisicki of Germany, who was a 3-set winner over unseeded No. 57 ranked American Sloan Stephens 7-6(5), 1-6, 6-2.
In other 3rd round action:
(2) Victoria Azarenka vs. Jana Cepelova 6-3, 6-3.
(3) Agnieszka Radwanska vs. Heather Watson: 6-0, 6-2.
(4) Petra Kvitova vs. Varvara Lepchenko: 6-1, 6-0.
(6) Serena Williams vs. (25) Jie Zheng: 6-7(5), 6-2, 9-7.
(8) Angelique Kerber vs. (28) Christina McHale: 6-2, 6-3.
(10) Sara Errani vs. Yaroslava Shvedova: 0-6, 4-6.
(12) Vera Zvonareva vs. Kim Clijsters: 3-6, 3-4.
(14) Ana Ivanovic vs. (22) Julia Goerges: 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.
(17) Maria Kirilenko vs. Sorana Cirstea: 6-3, 6-1.
(20) Nadia Petrova vs. Camila Giorgi: 3-6, 6-7(6).
(24) Francesca Schiavone vs. Yaroslava Shvedova: 6-0, 6-4.
(30) Peng Shuai vs. Arantxa Rus: 6-1, 6-2.
Tamira Paszek vs. Yanina Wickmayer: 2-6, 7-6(4), 7-5.
