The Williams sisters – Serena and Venus – will be the cynosure, as the women's singles quarterfinals take centre-stage at Wimbledon on Tuesday. With two of the top four seeds already out of the competition, there is room for a surprise finalist at the All England Championships this year, but the real mouthwatering clash will be an all Williams sisters final on Saturday.
For that to happen, Serena and Venus need to beat their respective quarterfinal opponents, before contemplating on getting the business done in the semifinals.
Serena plays the No.21 seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the quarterfinals, with the American looking to carry her form from her fourth round match against Russian in Svetlana Kuznetsova.
After a rain delay helped her cause, Serena went into brutal mode, winning the first set 7-5, before handing the experienced Russian a bagel in the second set.
When the world number one is on song, and she was firing winners from all over the court on Monday, there is little any opponent can do, so Pavlyuchenkova will hope to catch a bit of an off colour Serena in this quarterfinal.
Pavlyuchenkova has impressed in this Wimbledon so far, dropping just a single set in the tournament, and that too in the first round. Against fellow seeded opponents – Timea Bacsinszky and Coco Vandeweghe – the Russian has been outstanding, but then Serena is a whole another seeded-player level.
The first quarterfinal on Centre Court is the match between Australian Open champion Angelique Kerber and Simona Halep, the No.5 seed. Kerber, seeded 4, will start the match as the slight favourite, but Halep has the game to trouble any opponent, even if the German's superior power might turn out to be the difference.
Venus will open up the women's quarterfinal action on the No.1 Court, with the American veteran, winner of five Wimbledon titles, playing the unseeded Yaroslava Shvedova. Shvedova has picked up some impressive scalps en route to the quarterfinals, including former finalist Sabine Lisicki. So, confidence will be high when she faces Venus, who has had to bring all of her experience into play in a couple of matches, to be in this position.
The fourth quarterfinal is between 19th seed Dominika Cibulkova and Russian Elena Vesnina. Cibulkova is coming off one of the matches of the tournament, when she prevailed over No.3 seed Agnieszka Radwanska 6-3, 5-7, 9-7 in a three-hour thriller. The Slovakian also dumped Eugenie Bouchard out of Wimbledon 2016 in the third round, so she will start this match as the favourite, considering Vesnina has faced just one seeded player, the No.32 seed Andrea Petkovic, in the tournament so far.
Update: Serena Williams beat Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-4, 6-4, while her sister Venus got the better of Yaroslava Shvedova 7-6 (7-5), 6-2. In the ither two women's singles quarterfinals, Angelique Kerber and Elena Vesnina came through after wins over Simona Halep and Dominika Cibulkova respectively. Kerber defeated Halep 7-5, 7-6 (7-2) and Vesnina breezed past her Slovakian opponent 6-2, 6-2.
Where to Watch Live
The women's singles quarterfinals, to be played simultaneously on Centre Court and No.1 Court is set to begin at 1 p.m. BST (5.30 p.m. IST, 8 a.m. ET). Below is the live streaming and TV options.
India: TV: Star Sports 1/HD1 and Star Sports 4/HD4. Live Streaming: Hotstar and Starsports.com.
UK: TV: BBC One and Two. Live Streaming: BBC iPlayer.
France and Middle East: TV: Bein Sports. Live Streaming: Bein Sports Connect.
Asia: TV: Fox Sports Asia. Live Streaming: Fox Sports Play Asia.
China: TV: Beijing TV, LeTV Sports, Jiangsu TV.
USA: TV: ESPN. Live streaming: Watch ESPN.
Canada: TV: CTV and TSN. Live Streaming: TSN TV.
Australia: TV: Fox Sports. Live Streaming: Foxtel.
Europe: TV: EuroSport. Live Streaming: EuroSport Player.
