Scattered seeds and winners for Day 3

Written by: Staff on 26th June 2014

Scattered seeds and winners for Day 3 |

Whilst there was not as much carnage on the lush green grass of SW19 as last year, there were still some impressive names who fell.

Sergiy Stakhovsky followed up his win over Roger Federer last year with adding the scalp of French Open semi-finalist Ernests Gulbis.

Gulbis did not want to make any excuses, after his match.

“Today he served well in the match. Nothing was working from my side. Two of my biggest weapons, my serve and return, wasn’t there. Especially the serve. I couldn’t get any free points from my serve. There is different reasons because of that. I don’t want to get into details because of that.

“Sergiy, a lot of credit to him. That’s why he beat Roger last year. That’s why he beat Roger last year on grass. The guy has a good game plan. He comes in; he chips the ball; he takes out the pace. I just wasn’t hitting the ball well enough today.”

The Latvian continued: “I’m going to probably take some weeks off, and probably I’m going to start only in Toronto because my body needs rest, and my mind needs a little bit rest. It’s more my body. I have a little bit some problems here and there after Paris, yeah, so I’ll have probably 10 days off and then start practicing again. So good two, three weeks of practice, then going to USA.”

David Ferrer’s troubles continued as he fell to Russia’s Andrey Kuznetsov. Ferrer had been suffering from a stomach problem has not played since Roland Garros and he withdrew from the Topshelf Open in ‘s-Hertogenbosh last week, where he was the top seed.

Kuznetsov was the 2009 Junior Wimbledon champion and could be a potential quarter-final opponent for defending champion Andy Murray.

He said: “It was probably the biggest win in my career. I hope that I will be able to win next matches as well. For me, now it’s more important to recover for next matches and have some rest, especially mentally.”

He added: “Actually, I don’t even watch my next opponent. After the game, after today victory, I just ask my father who am I playing next. It’s just the way it goes on this tournament. So if I on Friday I will beat Leonardo Mayer, then I will ask my coach who I’m playing next, and that’s it.”

The other big casualty was on the women’s side as Victoria Azarenka’s return to the tour came to a halt at the hands of Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski in a tight three set battle.

Azarenka had not won a match since the Australian Open, and after a straight set first round win over Mirjana Lucic-Baroni. But all high hopes went as Jovanovski ended a six-match losing stream in her first round win over Johanna Larson.

The Serbian took the first set off Azarenka with a single break – which was matched in the second set as the Belarusian evened things up,

Jovanovski broke straight away in the decider for a 2-0 lead and building up a head of steam for 4-1 before Azarenka fought her way back. Azarenka found herself at 5-6 down but 40-0 up when Jovanovski won five straight points on the bounce to win 6-3 3-6 7-5.

Azarenka was working hard to find the positives after the match, but there is no doubt that she has no intention of languishing down the rankings come the hard-court season.

“It’s a little bit too many mistakes like not closing the opportunities, not being sharp enough. There are a lot of things that still has to be tuned and has to be practiced. It basically goes down to back to work.

“There are things that I’m happy with. I just need to look at the things that I need to improve. That’s what I want to focus on, things that I want to improve. I want to go back to practice like tomorrow, maybe even today. That’s it.”

She continued: “I’m very motivated. I’m not taking that as a downer, this match. I’m going to take it as motivation to be better.”

Winners today were defending champion Andy Murray who steamed over Blaz Rola 6-1 6-1 6-0 and last year’s finalist Novak Djokovic who overcame Radek Stepanek in an entertaining encounter.

Day four sees Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova all occupying the show courts.

Topics: Andrey Kuznetsov, David Ferrer, Ernests Gulbis, Maria Sharapova, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Tennis News, Victoria Azarenka, Wimbledon