Wimbledon 2018: Federer, Venus cruise into third round

Defending champion Roger federer stretched his streak of consecutive sets won at Wimbledon to 26, with a comfortable 6-4, 6-4, 6-1 victory over Lukas Lacko on Wednesday.

The Swiss Master did not face a single break point and hit 48 winners to defeat the 73rd ranked Slovakian. He will now face either 39-year-old Ivo Karlovic or Jan Lennard Struff in the third round.

Current favourite and eight-time Wimbledon champion Federer’s longest streak of sets won in the same competition is 34, which he achieved between the third-round in 2005 to the 2006 final.

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His dominance at the All England Club continued as he breezed his way past Lacko in just 89 minutes. He went on a run of 35 straight service points and hit 16 aces on his way to the victory.

Venus advances to the third round

Fine-time champion Venus Williams fought her way into the Wimbledon third round despite falling a set behind, with a 4-6, 6-0, 6-1 win over Russian qualifier Alexandra Dulgheru.

At 38, Venus is the older women in this year’s tournament and is making her 21st Wimbledon appearance and have reached the final nine times.

Her game against Dulgheru was similar to the way she played in the opening round, losing the first-set in both the games before bouncing back to clinch the victory.

Karolina Pliskova wins

In a battle of former world No. 1s, seventh seed Karolina Pliskova defeated Victoria Azarenka 6-3, 6-3 to advance to the third-round for the first time in the tournament.

Also Read: Wimbledon 2018: Former champions Sharapova, Kvitova suffer shock exit; Simona Halep advance into second round

Returning from pregnancy, Belarussian Azarenka was full of rust dropping service twice in the game and making two costly faults to give away a rather easy victory to Pliskova.

Purva Raja-Fabrice Martin bow out

The Indo-French doubles pair of Purva Raja and Fabrice Martin put up a gallent fight but eventually went down after an intense five-set battle against Mirza Basic and Dujan Lajovic to make an early exit on Wednesday.

Having gone down quite easily in the opening set, Raja and Martin bounced back to tie the match with even points but then went down tumbling in the final set to lose 2-6, 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-4, 9-11 after a three hour and 38 minutes excruciating battle.