'Kiki' Friday for Serena and Venus
The supreme double act of Serena and Venus Williams takes to the Wimbledon stage again on Friday and if you thought that, after winning 12 singles titles between them here, they must have seen it all, then think again. For this is not so much a Freaky Friday for them as a uniquely challenging ‘Kiki Friday’.
On Centre Court, the seven-times singles champion Serena faces Kristina Mladenovic, known to her French compatriots simply as ‘Kiki’, while Venus takes on the Dutch No.20 seed, Kiki Bertens on No.1 Court.
Both these dangerous Euro-Kikis could make life difficult for the two legends in a ladies’ draw in which a host of seeds, headed by the champion Garbiñe Muguruza on Thursday, have been plummeting like those ants that flew, swarmed and then fell to earth here around the Grounds earlier in the week.
There has always been a whiff of star quality about the tall, powerful Mladenovic, who looked perfectly at home on Centre Court when her match with Tatjana Maria was rescheduled on Wednesday at late notice.
Yet, though she broke into the top 10 last season, her swaggering progress was halted by a knee injury at last year’s Championships and, at 25, she’s an unfulfilled, if hungry, talent.
Serena, though, needs no reminding of how Mladenovic enjoys a big stage, having struggled to subdue her at Roland-Garros on her way to the title in 2016. That was the day Kiki, whose dad won Olympic handball gold for Yugoslavia and whose mum was a volleyball international, was really taken to Parisian hearts.
She beat Maria, who has a four-year-old daughter, but is now after the mother of all scalps. On No.3 Court, though, a win for qualifier and world No.120 Evgeniya Rodina, mum to five-year old Anna, over US Open finalist Madison Keys would doubtless feel to the Russian like the mother of all surprises.
Meanwhile, baby Olympia’s ‘Auntie’ Venus cannot afford the slower starts that meant she had to recover from a set down in her first two matches and Bertens, who held three match points against her in Miami in March, has promised to attack.
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The exploits of the popular Bertens, who pondered quitting last year because of the stresses of the Tour, are being followed enthusiastically back home with her coach Raemon Sluiter suggesting “crazier things have happened in tennis" than last year’s finalist going out.
Roger Federer has started this Wimbledon as smoothly as a cashmere-lined Rolls-Royce, seeming so at one with the world as the draw increasingly opens up for him like a royal procession that he says he even has time to dream about visiting the Queue to talk to all those who’ve camped all night just in the hope of watching him.
Those who do land that privileged peek into his Centre Court realm will see him face his first power player of the week, 6ft 5in (1.96m) German Jan-Lennard Struff, who survived Ivo Karlovic’s 61 aces and pounded 31 of his own to win his second straight five-setter.
Marvelling at how he softly defuses the big men’s 130mph-plus bombs is one of the (many) great joys of watching Federer and, doubtless, even after Marin Cilic’s exit on Thursday, there’ll be plenty more to dismantle with Kevin Anderson, John Isner, Sam Querrey and Milos Raonic all on his side of the draw and ready, between them, to add to the 230 aces they’ve delivered already.
Raonic boomed one down at 147mph in the last round, so Taylor Dent’s Wimbledon record of 148mph is in peril.
Not that Dennis Novak will worry about being in the Canadian’s firing line on No.1 Court. Everybody assumed that the Roland-Garros finalist, Dominic Thiem, would be Austria’s ace but instead it’s Novak, a 24-year-old qualifier ranked No.171, who has been the real shock, carving out five wins, including one over No.17 seed Lucas Pouille, to get this far.
Querrey got married last month and, after knocking out the holders Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic in the last two Wimbledons, he’s hoping new wife Abby will see him earn another notable scalp on Centre Court on Friday, even if she feels a few weeks watching big Sam play tennis doesn’t actually constitute a honeymoon.
His tennis honeymoon could be over quickly, too, as Gael Monfils, our favourite Gallic visitor, is having one of his gloriously eccentric weeks, playing shots from the gods, making line-call challenges against his own good serves and even disappearing down the pub to see England win a penalty shoot-out. Now, he hopes, it’s his - and Les Bleus’ - day.
