Five of the top eight women are out of Wimbledon with No. 2 Caroline Wozniacki‘s second-round loss amid a swarm of bugs Wednesday.
Wozniacki, the Australian Open champion, was upset by Russian Ekaterina Makarova 6-4, 1-6, 7-5.
Wozniacki went out before the third round for the fourth time in seven years, after complaining to the chair umpire about the insects that invaded No. 1 court during the second set.
In the first three days, the following women’s top-10 seeds have lost:
No. 2 Caroline Wozniacki
No. 4 Sloane Stephens
No. 5 Elina Svitolina
No. 6 Caroline Garcia
No. 8 Petra Kvitova
WIMBLEDON: Full Scores | Men’s Draw | Women’s Draw
That leaves No. 1 Simona Halep, No. 3 Garbine Muguruza, No. 7 Karolina Pliskova, No. 9 Venus Williams and No. 10 Madison Keys alive from the top 10.
Williams and Pliskova each advanced to the third round on Wednesday and could meet in the fourth round. They are the only single-digit seeds left in the bottom half of the draw.
No. 25 seed Serena Williams, also in the bottom half, beat Bulgarian qualifier Viktoriya Tomova 6-1, 6-4. She gets France’s Kiki Mladenovic in the third round with Keys potentially in the fourth round.
Also advancing was Roger Federer, who won 35 straight points on his serve in a 6-4, 6-4, 6-1 sweep of Lukas Lacko.
After serving out for the first set, Federer didn’t drop a single point on his serve in the second and kept that streak going until he was 30-0 up at 4-1 in the third — when Lacko finally sent a backhand winner down the line.
It was another dominant display by the eight-time champion, who lost just nine of 61 points on his serve in total and broke Lacko five times, including with a forehand winner to close out the match.
“On certain days it goes better than others,” Federer said. “Sometimes your serve matches up better against certain players.”
Williams was nearly as good, losing just five of 32 points on her first serve against Tomova. It was her 16th straight victory at Wimbledon, although she missed last year’s tournament while pregnant.
Wozniacki is still waiting to get past the round of 16 for the first time, despite fighting back from 5-1 down in the third set and saving four match points at 5-3. But she was broken again in the final game, becoming the fifth of the top eight women’s seeds to lose before the third round.
Five-time champion Venus Williams did better with her comeback attempt. The No. 9 seed, at 38 the oldest woman in the draw, came back to beat 141st-ranked qualifier Alexandra Dulgheru of Romania 4-6, 6-0, 6-1 after dropping the first set for a second straight match.
In the first round, she started by conceding a tiebreaker against 58th-ranked Johanna Larsson before taking 12 of the last 15 games.
“Ideally it’s two sets,” Venus said. “If it’s not two sets, then go to Plan B.”
In the men’s draw, 13th-seeded Milos Raonic and No. 11 Sam Querrey also advanced in straight sets.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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