Top seed and defending champion Serena Williams breezed into the Wimbledon fourth round but vowed to keep fighting for equal rights under the bright lights of the All England Club.
\nWorld number one she may be, but the 31-year-old American was slated as the last match on Court One on Saturday.
\nWith two marathon men\u2019s matches before her, she saw her third round clash with 42-year-old Kimiko Date-Krumm suddenly shifted to Centre Court under the roof and the lights.
\nHer match did not start until around 1930GMT much to her annoyance.
\n\u201cWell, it\u2019s their policy. I\u2019ve talked about that time and time again, how I\u2019m always fighting for the ladies,\u201d said Williams.
\n\u201cMaybe one day we\u2019ll get two matches and the men will get one match, and maybe they\u2019ll be able to switch back and forth hopefully.
\n\u201cBut it\u2019s definitely something we have to still work on.\u201d
\nWilliams was reluctant to get into a slanging match with All England Club schedulers despite her status as a five-time champion and 16-time Grand Slam singles trophy winner.
\n\u201cI was a little surprised that I was playing third on after two men. But I wasn\u2019t annoyed. I\u2019m able to deal with any circumstance,\u201d she said.
\nHer 6-2, 6-0 win over Date-Krumm gave her a Monday match-up with German 23rd seed Sabine Lisicki for a place in the quarter-finals.
\nSaturday\u2019s win was the 600th of Williams\u2019s career as the American continued her gentle cruise towards a sixth Wimbledon title.
\nA win today will also give her a 35th successive victory, taking her level with sister Venus\u2019s record set in 2000.
\n\u201cWow, 600 wins. I had no idea. What better place than under the roof at Centre Court to achieve it,\u201d said the 31-year-old American.
\nWilliams admitted that despite the late shifting of her court on Saturday, she was a definite convert to playing under the Wimbledon roof for the first time.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s definitely special. I prefer this one because it\u2019s indoor and it\u2019s grass,\u201d she said.
\n\u201cI missed all those indoor carpet tournaments in the \u201890s that I should have played, and I didn\u2019t know that was really good for my game.
\n\u201cSo, playing indoor on grass for me is like amazing. I love the atmosphere. I love the sound that the ball makes.
\n\u201cI feel like it\u2019s really just incredible. You hear the sound. I feel like the crowd is louder. It just feels really cool.\u201d
\nLisicki, a semi-finalist in 2011 and a quarter-finalist in 2009 and 2012, when she knocked out Maria Sharapova, said she would not be overawed by the challenge.
\nShe can certainly match the American\u2019s raw power\u2014coming into Wimbledon, the German had fired 185 aces in 2013, second only to her opponent\u2019s 268.
\n\u201cI was in that situation last year when everybody was saying that Sharapova was the favourite,\u201d said the 23-year-old.
\n\u201cI\u2019m probably going into that match being the underdog, but I like that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Top seed and defending champion Serena Williams breezed into the Wimbledon fourth round but vowed to keep fighting for equal rights under the bright lights of the All England Club.
\nWorld number one she may be, but the 31-year-old American was slated as the last match on Court One on Saturday.
\nWith two marathon men\u2019s matches before her, she saw her third round clash with 42-year-old Kimiko Date-Krumm suddenly shifted to Centre Court under the roof and the lights.
\nHer match did not start until around 1930GMT much to her annoyance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}