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SA star battling at Wimbledon

London - Top-ranked South African Kevin Anderson will resume a titanic struggle against Ukrainian opponent Illya Marchenko at Wimbledon on Wednesday.

There were no such worries for Rik de Voest though who went through to the second round with a straight sets victory.

When play was suspended on Court Five, 36th ranked Anderson was up two sets to one but a break down in the fourth set. This after 3hr 20min of their first round action.

The scoreline read 6-7 (5) 7-6 (9) 3-5. Anderson’s big first service was working well with a 73% first service percentage and at the time of the interruption he’d already fired down 17 of them, compared to just four by Marchenko.

Double faults were four by Anderson and six to Marchenko. Anderson was still making more unforced errors than his rival (40-31) but in terms of winners he was 49-41 to the good.

Meanwhile De Voest, who came through qualifying, had a comfortable and encouraging win over Spain’s Ruen Ramirez Hidalgo, going through 6-2 6-3 6-2.

The match lasted just 2hr 07min and De Voest, currently ranked 147th on the ATP Tour rankings, fired down seven aces compared to 121st ranked Hidalgo’s four.

He’ll now come up against a player ranked more than 300 places lower than him in Chile’s Fernando Gonzalez, in the second round. “A good day at the office, now to take the good form into Thursday’s match against Gonzales”, said De Voest on his Facebook website.

Meanwhile our top-ranked women’s player, Chani Scheepers is scheduled to get her campaign under way on Court 11 when she takes on Russia’s Evgeniya Rodina.

And on Court Eight, our top-ranked doubles player Wesley Moodie and Belgium’s Dick Norman are also in action. The tournament’s 11th seeds take on a South African/Philippines combo in Izak van der Merwe and Treat Conrad Huey.
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