Following a day of upsets that saw two American women’s top-10 seeds go down, No. 6 Madison Keys moved into the third round at Wimbledon with a comfortable 6-4, 6-2 victory over Olga Danilovic on Wednesday.
“I knew that I wanted to get the momentum as early as I could and try to keep it,” Keys said in an on-court interview. “I knew that she could play really great tennis, so just wanted to get a lead and then run with it.”
In the opening round and amid scorching heat, Keys had to battle past Elena-Gabriela Ruse 6-7 (4), 7-5, 7-5, her fifth major win this season that went past 5-all in the third set, an Open era record for a single year.
She had an easier time of it Wednesday, firing off 19 winners and wrapping up the second-round match in 75 minutes.
“I definitely felt a little bit more comfortable today — it’s the cloudy, rainy England that we know and love, so that helped a lot … felt a little bit more normal out here today,” Keys said with a laugh.
With the women’s side losing No. 2 Coco Gauff and No. 3 Jessica Pegula on Tuesday, it’s the first women’s major in the Open era in which two of the top three seeds lost their opening matches.
Keys’ 52-18 (.742 win pct) tour-level record on grass is the third highest among active women (minimum 15 matches), after Venus Williams (98-26, .790 win pct) and Petra Kvitova (74-25, .747 win pct).
In other women’s singles results Wednesday, Britain’s Sonay Kartal defeated Viktoriya Tomova of Bulgaria 6-2, 6-2 to reach the third round.
“I felt good on court today. I was hitting it really clean. It was one of those good days at the office,” Kartal said.
ESPN Research contributed to this report.
