London, June 28
Defending champion Karolina Pliskova squandered a 4-1 lead in the deciding set as she was knocked out of the pre-Wimbledon Eastbourne grasscourt championships by Belarussian Aryna Sabalenka.
The Czech seemed to have everything under control after recovering from the loss of the first set but her game went off the boil and Sabalenka stormed back to win 6-3 2-6 7-6(5). Sabalenka’s first victory over a top-10 opponent means that in the last-8 she will face former champion Agnieszka Radwanska, who got the better of Latvian Jelena Ostapenko.
In the men’s event, surprise French Open semifinalist Marco Cecchinato of Italy reached the last-4 with a 5-7 6-3 6-2 defeat of Australian John Millman. He will face Slovakia’s Lukas Lacko, who ended the hopes of British wildcard Cameron Norrie.
Bouchard survives
Eugenie Bouchard successfully negotiated the qualifying draw on Thursday, beating Colombian Mariana Duque-Marino 6-3 6-2 to secure a spot in next week’s main draw.
Serena returns
Four weeks on from her run to the last-16 at the French Open, Serena Williams is back at Wimbledon, having missed last year’s event as she prepared for the birth of her daughter. Ranked 183 after just three tournaments back, the seven-time champion will go into Wimbledon as the 25th seed, the seeding committee having deviated from the WTA ranking list, an exception because she is coming back after maternity leave. Williams did not play a warm-up event on grass. Instead she arrived early at Wimbledon and has been practising hard under the eye of her coach Patrick Mouratoglou. — Agencies
Vardhan-Balaji qualify
Vishnu Vardhan and N Sriram Balaji toppled the top-seeded pair of Denys Molchanov of Ukraine and Igor Zelenay of Slovakia 6-3 6-4 in the final qualifying round of the Wimbledon to secure their spot in the main draw.
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