Venus enjoys feelgood factor on Centre Court

 
1 August 2012

Venus Williams never feels more at home than when playing on Wimbledon’s Centre Court and the 32-year-old American showed this afternoon that she remains a formidable force on grass, writes Paul Newman.

The five-times champion at the All England Club crushed Canada’s Aleksandra Wozniak 6-1, 6-3 in just 63 minutes to book a place a third round clash with Germany’s Angelique Kerber.

When Williams made her comeback following her diagnosis with an auto-immune disease last summer it was the thought of playing in the Olympics at Wimbledon that provided her greatest motivation. She has already won three gold medals, in singles and doubles at Sydney in 2000 and in doubles in Beijing four years ago.

Wozniak, ranked 52 in the world, had taken Williams to a final-set

tie-break in their only previous meeting earlier this year, but the

24-year-old Canadian had no answer to her opponent’s power.

Having won only five points on Williams’s serve in the first set, Wozniak went 5-1 down in the second before briefly raising hopes by winning two games. Williams, served out to love to win the match.

ANDY MURRAY will partner Laura Robson in the mixed doubles. The competition starts tomorrow.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in