Serena Williams earned a decent day's rest on the middle Sunday at Wimbledon as Jo-Wilfried Tsonga had to work overtime - 19-17 in the fifth set — in another marathon involving John Isner.
Williams, the defending women's champion and six-time winner, overwhelmed Annika Beck 6-3, 6-0 in just 51 minutes on Centre Court early Sunday afternoon, advancing to the fourth round with her 300th career Grand Slam match win.
Williams, who compiled a 25-2 edge in winners, wasn't aware of the 300-win milestone until she was asked about it in a post-match interview.
"Was itIJ Cool. Oh, nice," she said with a laugh. "I had no idea. That's awesome, rightIJ That's good, rightIJ I think that's a lot of matches."
Williams' latest win breaks a tie at 299 wins with Chris Evert. She now ranks second in the Open era behind Martina Navratilova, who went 306-49.
For only the fourth time in Wimbledon's 139-year history, play was scheduled on the middle Sunday, which is the traditional rest day, because of rain delays in the first week that caused a backlog of matches. All 22,000 tickets were snapped up in 27 minutes when they went on sale online on Saturday.
While Williams played just 15 games in under an hour, Tsonga and Isner needed 44 games and 2 hours, 33 minutes to complete the final two sets of their suspended third-round match. The final set featured 36 games and lasted 2 hours, 8 minutes.
"It's good to be alive," said Tsonga, who saved a match point at 16-15 in the fifth before overcoming the American 6-7 (3), 3-6, 7-6 (5), 6-2, 19-17.
Isner led two sets to one when play suspended because of darkness on Saturday. The match lasted a total of 4 hours, 24 minutes on Court 2.
That's still modest compared to Isner's win over France's Nicolas Mahut six years ago. He prevailed 70-68 in the final set of the longest match in tennis history, which lasted more than 11 hours over three days in the first round.
Another Frenchman, No. 32 lucas Pouille, ended the Grand Slam comeback of Juan Martin del Potro, beating the Argentine 6-7 (4), 7-6 (6), 7-5, 6-1. The 22-year-old Pouille had never won a tour-level match on grass until this tournament.
Nick Kyrgios, an Australian seeded No. 15, set up a marquee fourth-round matchup against No 2 Andy Murray, defeating Feliciano lopez 6-3, 6-7 (2), 6-3, 6-4.
Kuznetsova hits out
Two-time Grand Slam champion Svetlana Kuznetsova reached the Wimbledon fourth round for the first time since 2008 on Sunday despite becoming involved in a row with the umpire over coaching.
The 31-year-old 13th seed battled back from 2-5 down in the final set to defeat US 18th seed Sloane Stephens 6-7 (1/7), 6-2, 8-6 and set up a last-16 clash with Serena Williams.
But the Russian was hit with a code violation for coaching early in the final set which prompted a bitter exchange with umpire Marijana Veljovic. "I'm just doing my job," said the official.
"Well, you're not doing it very well," responded Kuznetsova.
Kuznetsova inisted that she was not being coached by Hernan Gumy, claiming he was only passing on encouragement. "It's really frustrating," said the three-time quarter-finalist.
"She warned me but I said, 'did you hear what he saidIJ' I told her he talks a lot. "He just said, 'great job, keep going'. It's very frustrating. I lost a little momentum after that but I managed to fight back."