Radwanska downs Li in epic
Sabine Lisicki swept into the Wimbledon semi-finals on Tuesday as the German followed her sensational upset of Serena Williams with an emphatic 6-3, 6-3 victory over Estonia’s Kaia Kanepi.
Lisicki, seeded 23rd, will play Polish fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska for a place in her first Grand Slam final.
Radwanska downed China’s Li Na in an epic quarter-final between the top two seeds to reach the last eight. The Polish, last year’s beaten finalist, beat the sixth seed 7-6 (7/5), 4-6, 6-2 in a two-hour, 43 minute contest on Centre Court.
Now the big-serving Lisicki has a chance to finally reach her first Grand Slam final and become the first German woman to feature in the Wimbledon final since Steffi Graf in 1999.
“I’m very happy. It was an amazing match yesterday so I had to make sure I calmed down quickly for today,” Lisicki said.
“The experience I had in the other quarter-finals at Wimbledon helped me a lot.
“I had great challenges here this year and that made me even more ready for this match.
“There’s no pressure. It’s a game I love so much and I want to keep it that way.”
Steve Darcis, Sergiy Stakhovsky and Michelle Larcher De Brito, the respective conquerers of Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Sharapova last week, had all crashed out in their next matches after those Wimbledon shockers.
But Lisicki, who had less than 24 hours to recover after her epic triumph against Williams, avoided the same fate with another commanding display.
She hit 23 winners to just 13 from Kanepi and cruised to victory in only 65 minutes on Court One.
On Monday night, Andy Murray took another step closer to ending Britain’s agonising 77-year wait for a men’s Wimbledon champion as Jerzy Janowicz and Lukasz Kubot guaranteed Poland a semi-final place.
British second seed Murray survived a second set wobble to carve out a 6-4, 7-6 (7/5), 6-1 win over Russian 20th seed Mikhail Youzhny to reach the quarter-finals.
Murray, the runner-up to Roger Federer in 2012, will face Spain’s Fernando Verdasco for a place in the semi-finals.
Paes, Bopanna advance
India’s Leander Paes and Rohan Bopanna breezed into the quarters and pre-quarter-finals of the men’s and mixed doubles events along with their respective partners.
The fourth seeded pair of Paes and his Czech partner Radek Stepanek teamed up to knock out Polish duo Lukasz Kubot and Marcin Matkowski 6-4, 6-2, 6-4 in the third round of the men’s doubles event at the All England Club.
Bopanna paired up with Chinese Jie Zheng to post a straight-set 7-6 (8-6) 7-5 win over Robert Farah of Columbia and Darija Jurak of Croatia in the second round of the mixed doubles event.
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