LONDON-- Daria Kasatkina made swift and short work of her second round match at Wimbledon thumping British wildcard Jodie Burrage 6-0 6-2 in an hour on Wednesday.
Despite a wobble at the start of the second set when the 11th-seeded Russian dropped her serve, the partisan Centre Court crowd found little to cheer during the rain-interrupted first match of a damp day. Kasatkina, who beat American Caroline Dolehide in her opening match on Monday, found herself in the third round before many first-round matches had been completed because of heavy rain that washed out nearly 70 matches on Tuesday. The Russian flew through the first set in 19 minutes, pummelling the clearly nervous local favourite with heavy groundstrokes. Burrage, who accumulated only eight points in the first set, dropped her first service game with a double fault and served another to hand Kasatkina the first set. The 24-year-old Londoner, whose career has been blighted by a series of ankle injuries and operations, finally got herself on the scoreboard with some attacking net play in the second set.
But her brief flurry was curbed when Kasatkina broke back immediately before the players were ushered off court because of a shower. They were back some 15 minutes later and, while the 108th-ranked Burrage showed more resistance, she was outpowered and outplayed. Kasatkina won the match with another break of serve when Burrage heaved a forehand long. She said it was tough to play a Briton on Centre Court. "I was nervous as well to play on the best court in the world," she said in an interview on court. Kasatkina reached the quarter-finals at Wimbledon in 2018 and plans to do better this year.
"I hope I have improved since then," she said. Another British woman was given a big stage with Heather Watson up against Czech 10th seed Barbora Krejcikova. Watson put up more resistance against the former French Open champion but fell to a 6-2 7-5 defeat. But there was cheer for the home crowd as British number one Katie Boulter beat Australia's Daria Saville 7-6(4) 6-2 despite a mid-match interruption by climate change protesters.
