Tennis:Women's top seed Maria Sharapova secured her passage into Wimbledon's second week with a regulation win over Su-Wei Hsieh this afternoon.
The French Open champion broke serve three times in the opening set and then recovered from a break in the first game of the second to take the match 6-1 6-4.
Her reward is a fourth-round meeting with Germany’s Sabine Lisicki , the woman she beat at the semi-final stage last year.
Sharapova will need to serve better against the German on Monday, having offered up five double faults today, but her unheralded opponent was rarely in a position to cash in.
When Hsieh did break to go 1-0 up in the second she had already succumbed to a heavy first-set loss, losing serve three out of the four times she had the ball in hand.
The 26-year-old Taiwan player, competing in her fourth Wimbledon singles, did move 4-2 ahead in the second set, but Sharapova quickly broke back and then sped away with the match on a windy Court One.
“She was a tricky opponent,” Sharapova said afterwards. “She changed the pace really well and her serve is really tricky. The conditions were tough, I had to face a lot out there and be patient.
“The wind was tricky but I knew I had to handle it.”