Williams sisters ease past Slovenian pairing to reach doubles semi-final
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Your support makes all the difference.You can't keep the Williams sisters down this year. On the eve of their third Grand Slam singles final en famille, they warmed up yesterday by cruising into the semi-finals of the Wimbledon women's doubles.
In a match which took place on Court One at the same time as the first instalment of Hewitt v Henman, and was thus punctuated by the shrieks from Centre Court, the Williams sisters crushed the top Slovenians, Tina Krizan and Katerina Srebotnik, 6-2, 6-0 in 52 minutes.
The only threat to their dominance seemed to be wavering concentration, plus the absence of their mother Oracene.
The win takes the sisters through to a semi-final against the one unseeded pairing left in the women's doubles, Anna Kournikova and Chanda Rubin.
Despite her first-round singles loss to Tatiana Panova, this has been a good tournament for Kournikova. Her scratch pairing with Rubin has been a great success – after reaching the last eight without dropping a set, the two put out the runaway world No 1 partnership of Lisa Raymond and Rennae Stubbs in the quarter-finals after dropping the first set 6-1.
Kournikova has also gelled well with Jonas Bjorkman in the mixed doubles. They came back from a bad start against Todd Woodbridge and Martina Navratilova in the second round to win in three, and they were due to play Mahesh Bhupathi and Elena Likhovtseva in the quarter-finals last night in a match likely to take place today.
That is because Likhovtseva played in the other women's doubles semi-final, she and Cara Black, the No 4 seeds, losing to the second-seeded Virginia Ruano Pascual and Paola Suarez 6-3, 3-6, 6-4.
Ruano Pascual and Suarez took the first set on two breaks, but when rain came Black and Likhovtseva led 5-2 in the second.
After the resumption the Zimbabwe-Russian combination finished off the second set, but a break in the sixth game of the third took the Spanish-Argentinian pair into their second Grand Slam final of the year.
The record of success of Ruano Pascual and Suarez confirms the trend of fewer top names playing women's doubles. With the exception of Yevgeny Kafelnikov, the top singles names in men's tennis have long since stopped playing doubles at the Slams – especially at Wimbledon where matches are the best of five sets from the first round – but the semi-finals are packed with the top doubles teams.
The top men's seeds and defending champions, Don Johnson and Jared Palmer, were at one set all with the world champions, Jonas Bjorkman and Todd Woodbridge, when bad light forced a halt last night. The victors will play Mark Knowles of the Bahamas and Daniel Nestor of Canada. They beat the American twins, Mike and Bob Bryan, 7-6, 7-6, 7-6.
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