The Associated Press
Chris Lehourites
LONDON–Playing at Wimbledon for the 20th time, Venus Williams is in the semi-finals for the 10th time.
The five-time champion at the All England Club advanced to the final four for the second-straight year by beating Jelena Ostapenko 6-3, 7-5 today under a closed roof on Centre Court.
Williams, who is 37 years old, made her Wimbledon debut in the same month that Ostapenko was born.
She last won the title in 2008, but reached the semi-finals last year and the Australian Open final this year.
“I love it. I try really hard,” Williams said of tennis. “There’s no other explanation.
“You do your best while you can,” she noted. “That’s what I’m doing.”
Williams went up a break early in both sets against Ostapenko, the French Open champion.
But the 20-year-old Latvian broke back in the second set and pushed the score to 5-5.
A few unforced errors later, though, and Williams broke again for a 6-5 lead before serving out the match.
Williams ended up with eight aces and only 13 winners. Ostapenko had one ace and 20 winners.
“Been working on that serve,” Williams said. “It’s working out for me just in time, just for these later rounds.
“I’d like to think that I can continue to rely on that as the matches continue.”
Williams next will face either second-seeded Simona Halep or Johanna Konta on Thursday.
In the other women’s semi-final match, Garbine Muguruza will play either CoCo Vandeweghe or Magdalena Rybarikova.
Muguruza beat Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-3, 6-4 on No. 1 Court earlier today.
On the men’s side, Novak Djokovic advanced to the quarter-finals by beating Adrian Mannarino 6-2, 7-6 (5), 6-4 today.
That match–the first to be played under the roof on Centre Court at this year’s tournament–was postponed from yesterday.
Djokovic was up a break in the third set when he asked for a medical time-out and a trainer examined and stretched his right shoulder.
The second-seeded Serb appeared to grimace in pain a couple of times as his shoulder was being checked.
“It’s been something that I’ve been dragging back and forth for a while now,” Djokovic noted.
“But I’m still managing to play, which is the most important thing.”
The 12-time major champion, who won the Wimbledon title in 2011, ’14, and ’15, advanced to the quarter-finals at the All England Club for the ninth time.
Djokovic will face 2010 Wimbledon finalist Tomas Berdych, a man he has beaten 25 times in 27 matches, in the quarter-finals tomorrow.
One of those losses, however, was in the Wimbledon semi-finals in 2010.
The men traditionally have Tuesday off at Wimbledon but Rafael Nadal’s five-set loss to Gilles Muller yesterday forced Djokovic’s match to be pushed back a day.
Canadian Milos Raonic advanced to the quarter-finals after posting a 4-6, 7-5, 4-6, 7-5, 6-1 win over Germany’s Alexander Zverev yesterday.
Raonic, from Thornhill, Ont., struggled against the 10th-seeded German early on and looked to be in trouble after falling behind two sets to one.
But a break to win the fourth set seemed to invigorate the sixth-seeded Canadian, who steamrolled to victory with a dominant fifth set.
He served to love in the deciding game–converting his first match point with his 23rd ace.
Raonic, a finalist last year at Wimbledon, will face Roger Federer in the quarter-finals.
Federer, the third-ranked Swiss star, is looking to win a championship at Wimbledon for a record eighth time.
