Serena Williams kept her Wimbledon title defence on track on Sunday, downing Germany’s Annika Beck 6-3, 6-0 with a crushing display of power and booming serves to chalk up her 300th grand slam victory.
Williams looked in no mood to follow the men’s top seed Novak Djokovic out of tournament after his shock defeat on Saturday and treated the middle Sunday party crowd to an imperious 51-minute performance.
Warning her last-16 opponent, the Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova, that there is more to come, the world No1 said: “I thought it was good. I still want to get out to a little bit of a faster start but I was really focused and calm today.”
The American was broken by the unseeded Beck in her second service game but then stepped it up and never looked back. She thundered down the biggest women’s serve of the tournament so far at 123mph (198kph), followed by an ace, to seal the first set against the 22-year-old.
Williams, who said she had been helped by enduring a scare in round two against her American compatriot Christina McHale, romped through the second set in 20 minutes as Beck’s resistance crumbled.
The match brought her 300th grand slam win – something that seemed to take her by surprise. “No? Was it? Cool, oh nice. I had no idea, that’s awesome, right? I think that is a lot of matches,” she said as she came off court.
The statistic, just one of a dizzying array for the six-times Wimbledon champion, takes her past Chris Evert on 299 and leaves her behind Martina Navratilova on 306 after what, by Williams’s standards, has been a disappointing spell. She lost the French Open final against Spain’s Garbiñe Muguruza and was beaten in the Australian final by Angelique Kerber. She also lost in the US Open semi-finals last year, robbing her of the chance to hold all four major titles in the same season after securing four in a row with the Wimbledon win last year. With those losses, perhaps the most glittering number of them all still eludes her.
Williams is continuing her quest for at least one more slam to equal or better Steffi Graf’s Open era record of 22 major titles, although she believes she has already etched her name in the history books, alongside Djokovic.
“I think he and I have both made extreme history. He’s won four in a row. I won four in a row last year. I think that’s historic in itself,” she told reporters.
Her next opponent, Kuznetsova, reached the Wimbledon fourth round for the first time in eight years with a 6-7(1), 6-2, 8-6 win over the American Sloane Stephens.
“I’m looking forward to it. We both are ready for this match. You know, we’re both going to give it our heart, as we always do when we play each other,” Williams said. “I know what it takes to win these tournaments. It’s just about now just doing it.”
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