Ivanovic, Bouchard Advance in England
Ana Ivanovic moved into the third-round at Wimbledon Thursday, coasting to a 6-4, 6-0 straight set victory over Zheng Jie of China.
Despite struggling at Wimbledon over the last few years, Ivanovic has been playing some of her best tennis recently including the victory at the Aegon Championships last week.
“It’s been a slow, slow climb back,” said Ivanovic referring to her up and down play in recent years. “I feel like I’ve been playing a lot of matches and getting a lot of good victories this year.”
After each player exchanged breaks early in the first set, the Serb was able to outlast in the opener, taking it 6-4. From there, the match was all Ivanovic’s as she put all of her skill set on display.
An early break by Zheng in the second set did not deter Ivanovic at all; she hit a number of winners which exposed her opponent’s poor groundstroke play. Her aggressiveness at the net became too much to handle and she closed the match with a forehand volley winner.
She committed just nine unforced errors to 20 winners and nailed nine aces over the course of the match. Ivanovic will look to continue her solid play when she meets Sabine Lisicki in the third-round.
Lisicki reached the title match of Wimbledon last year, and knocked off Czech Karolina Pliskova 6-3, 7-5 to advance Thursday.
The 13th seeded Canadian Eugenie Bouchard moved on to the next round with her 7-5, 6-1 victory over Spaniard Silvia Soler Espinosa. Another Spaniard, Carla Suarez Navarro, also fell on Thursday as Kazakhstan’s Zarina Diyas pulled off the 7-6(14-12), 5-7, 6-2 victory.
