London: Home favourite Laura Robson was the toast of Wimbledon again on Friday as the 19-year-old reached the third round for the first time, five years after being dubbed the “next big thing” in British women’s tennis.
By this stage of the tournament the only British female presence is usually the ball girls, but Robson, who won the junior Wimbledon title as a 14-year-old, was given the unexpected honour of playing on Centre Court after her match was postponed by rain on Thursday. She duly rose to the occasion and surfed a wave of home support to beat Colombian qualifier Mariana Duque-Marino 6-4, 6-1.
“It’s a big win for me,” said Robson. “Any match on Centre Court is a big one and it was a great atmosphere out there and having the roof closed just made it louder.”
Robson had never gone beyond the second round at Wimbledon, though she did reach the fourth at last year’s US Open — the first British woman to last that long in a grand slam event for 14 years.
Being the best British woman player at Wimbledon is admittedly a relatively limited sub-group but, having beaten 10th seed Maria Kirilenko on Tuesday, Robson started as a clear favourite in front of her home fans.
With both women occasionally employing a floaty sliced backhand, something of a rarity at the top level these days, the rallies had some real variety, even if there were too many basic errors to worry any of the big names in the draw.
Both players struggled to find any consistency early on but Robson eventually settled to take a first set that featured five breaks of serve. Once Robson had pocketed that, she grew in confidence and started delivering some real power with her groundstrokes to race through the second set virtually untroubled and now has a winnable third-round meeting with New Zealander Marina Erakovic.
“I didn’t think I played my best, my timing was a bit off, but I just had to accept that and try to control it,” she said.
“I was feeling nervous but then thought she was probably more nervous than I was. I’m really excited.”
SIT-DOWN PROTEST
Elsewhere, Grigor Dimitrov staged a temporary sit-down protest to register his anger at court conditions before he lost a five-set thriller.
The Bulgarian 29th seed, watched by superstar girlfriend Maria Sharapova, who was knocked out on Wednesday, went out 3-6, 7-6 (7/4), 3-6, 6-4, 11-9 to Slovenia’s Grega Zemlja in a second round match suspended due to rain on Thursday.
When the tie resumed on Court Three after a two-hour delay caused by more rain, the 22-year-old Dimitrov, watched by the sunglasses-wearing Sharapova, slipped and fell in his service action at 8-9 to give up the third match point of the tie.
He then stomped off to the sidelines and sat in his courtside chair.
The umpire and tournament referee then decided to wait out the drizzle before play resumed 10 minutes later.
But it didn’t change Dimitrov’s luck as Zemlja took victory on a sixth match point with a fine forehand passing shot.
“It started raining during the warm-up. I kind of thought the umpire would say something,” said Dimitrov, a former boys’ champion at Wimbledon. “When I slipped, I fell down, I hurt my hip. I told him I’m not serving.”
