By Pritha Sarkar
LONDON (Reuters) – Jessica Pegula enjoyed one of those scarcely believable days at Wimbledon as her racket oozed winners left, right and centre in a 6-1 6-3 fourth-round destruction of luckless Ukrainian Lesia Tsurenko.
Tsurenko was left slapping her thighs and talking animatedly into her racket but no matter what she tried, it seemed like her game had slipped into a terminal coma.
Pegula took full advantage of her opponent’s woes as she walloped thunderous winners from the baseline to streak into a 5-0 lead in 18 blinding minutes.
Perhaps still feeling the effects of the mammoth effort she put into overcoming Ana Bogdan in the previous round, when Tsurenko won the longest women’s singles tiebreak (20-18 in the third set) at a slam in the Open Era, the Ukrainian could do little to stop the on-fire Pegula’s charge.
Tsurenko was lucky not to be completely wiped out from the opening set as the American fourth seed missed a set point in the sixth game.
That blip allowed Tsurenko to finally get a look-in as she registered her name on the scoreboard, earning her a round of sympathetic applause from the Court One crowd.
That respite, however, was brief as Pegula went on another three-game winning spree to take a 6-1 2-0 lead.
The mounting errors from Tsurenko left her trailing 5-1 in the second set too and while she managed to break Pegula when the American was serving for a place in the quarter-finals two games later, it seemed her body had faced enough punishment for the day.
After saving two match points, the 34-year-old winced in pain on the baseline and wasted little time in removing her right shoe and sock, revealing a bloody underfoot blister.
The on-court intervention from the trainer only delayed the inevitable as two points later Pegula was celebrating with a clenched fist as she booked a last-eight showdown with Marketa Vondrousova.
(Reporting by Pritha Sarkar, editing by Clare Fallon)
