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Li, Bremond Wimbledon Surprise Packages
Posted on July 4, 2006
LONDON, UK -- For the world's current Top 4 and a pair of Russian former Top 5 players, reaching the Wimbledon quarterfinals didn't come as a huge surprise. But for Chinese trailblazer Li Na and French qualifier Severine Bremond, reaching the last eight here was a dream come true, after all eight fourth round matches were played Monday.
Li, who recently became the first Chinese player to rank Top 30 in Sony Ericsson WTA Tour history, became the very first player from her nation to reach the quarters of a Grand Slam Monday, toughing out a 46 61 63 victory over No.10 seed Nicole Vaidisova. After dropping the opening set, the No.27-seeded Li cruised the rest of the way, breaking serve twice in each of the final two sets and dictating play with her powerful, flat groundstrokes, eventually closing it out in one hour, 44 minutes.
"I'm just quite pleased at the stage where I am now," stated Li. "Although I lost the first set, I'm proud of what I did. I'm proud of myself and for my country as well. Especially because this is the first time I'm in the quarterfinals."
"I am definitely a little disappointed right now, but I still have a long career in front of me," said Vaidisova, who was contesting the second week here for the first time. "But I have to give credit to her. On some points, the important points, she played great points, hit some great shots. Just what everybody saw."
Bremond reached the quarterfinals with a tense 76(11) 63 victory over No.18-seeded Ai Sugiyama. The 26-year-old Frenchwoman saved nine set points in the first set, three trailing 5-3, one trailing 6-5 and then five more in the tie-break, before clinching it on her fourth set point. In the second set, the big-serving Bremond won six of the last seven games of the match after trailing 2-0 early, becoming the first woman since Jelena Dokic and Alexandra Stevenson in 1999 to reach the last eight as a qualifier.
Awaiting Li and Bremond in the quarters are Belgians Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin-Hardenne, respectively. Clijsters seeded No.2, blitzed teen-aged Polish wild card Agnieszka Radwanska, 62 62, while Henin-Hardenne, the No.3 seed, beat No.15 seed Daniela Hantuchova, 63 61. Both were happy to reach this stage.
"Before the tournament started, I said if I was still going to be here now, of course, I'd prefer to be here than to be sitting at home," Clijsters said. "I had a walkover in my second round, so the first week I didn't play that much. But now I feel good. Just the serve was a little bit off today. That's something I'll definitely have to focus on, making sure that I get enough of a first serve percentage."
"Tomorrow it's another match," Henin-Hardenne stated. "I'm very happy with this result in Wimbledon because I didn't play well last year and couldn't be here two years ago. Now I have to go match by match. I'm sure the girl I'm playing tomorrow, when you beat players like Schnyder, Sugiyama, Dulko, it means you're playing very good tennis."
While Clijsters and Henin-Hardenne face unheralded opponents on the bottom half of the draw, the top half sees No.1 seed Amelie Mauresmo and No.4 seed Maria Sharapova facing a pair of players who definitely were not unheralded.
Mauresmo, who used a big serve and frequent rushes to the net to defeat No.19 seed Ana Ivanovic, 63 64 in her fourth round match, will next play No.9 seed Anastasia Myskina, a 64 76(5) winner over No.26 seed Jelena Jankovic, the conqueror of defending champion Venus Williams. Mauresmo and Myskina clashed in the quarterfinals here last year, the Frenchwoman winning, 63 64.
"I just have to stay in the present and stay focused on each match," Mauresmo said. "Maybe it's going to be a little bit of a different match than last year. Last year she was a bit down in her career after winning the French Open the year before. She had trouble staying at the highest level. But I'm ready for it. I know her well. She knows me well also. I'm expecting a tough one."
"I'm sure Amelie will take me more seriously because last year, Wimbledon was a drama for me; I was like losing every match," said Myskina, who notched three marathon wins en route to last year's quarterfinal, but this year hasn't dropped a set, and is also coming off a run to the Eastbourne final. "Here it's a little bit different. I played well last week. I am playing good this week."
Sharapova, who survived a 76(5) 36 63 thriller with No.16 seed Flavia Pennetta, is up against No.7 seed Elena Dementieva in the quarters. Sharapova was given a difficult test by Pennetta in the two-hour, 27-minute slugfest. The Italian actually ended up winning more points in total (112-110) and had a more impressive winners-to-errors differential (+7 to -8), but it was the Russian who stepped it up on the more crucial points in the first set tie-break and in the third. Dementieva, meanwhile, blew past unseeded American Shenay Perry in her match, 62 60, in a mere 54 minutes.
"I didn't feel I was playing my best tennis; in the end, it all came down to how much I fought," Sharapova said. "Definitely I'll have to step it up for my next match. I've always had really tough matches against Dementieva. She's fit and strong, and gets a lot of balls back. I'll just have to be ready for another fight."
--WTA
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