Wimbledon Day 7 recap: Serena flies past Venus

Serena, above, and Venus Williams, below,
met in a Grand Slam tournament for the first
time in six years. 2014 photos by Paul Bauman

   Match of the day -- Serena "Vanessa" Williams didn't mess around this time. She wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.
   Either that, or Venus "And Mars" Williams didn't want to ruin her older sister's chance to earn the first calendar-year Grand Slam since Steffi "Para" Graf in 1988.
   Top-seeded Serena Williams dispatched No. 16 Venus 6-4, 6-3 in 68 minutes in a matchup of five-time Wimbledon singles champions in the round of 16.
   Serena, 33, improved to 15-11 against Venus, 35, with her sixth victory in their last seven matches. They met in a Grand Slam tournament for the first time since Serena won the 2009 Wimbledon final.
   Venus won the last of her seven major singles titles at Wimbledon in 2008. She was diagnosed with a chronic, enervating auto-immune disease in 2011.
   Upsets of the day -- Tomas "Larry" Berdych and "I Love" Lucie Safarova have a lot in common. Both are from the Czech Republic. They dated for eight years until breaking up in 2011. Both lost their only Grand Slam singles final. And both exited on Monday as sixth seeds.
   Berdych, the 2010 Wimbledon runner-up, lost meekly to No. 12 Gilles "Paul" Simon of France 6-3, 6-3, 6-2. Safarova, a French Open finalist last month, fell to unseeded CoCo "Chanel" Vandeweghe 7-6 (1), 7-6 (4).
   No. 5 "Sweet" Caroline Wozniacki was the highest seed to lose -- 6-4, 6-4 to No. 20 Garbine Muguruza "Bader Ginsburg" -- but the 24-year-old Dane has never advanced past the fourth round at Wimbledon.
   Notable -- The match between top-seeded Novak "It's No" Djokovic, the defending and two-time champion, and No. 14 Kevin Anderson was suspended by darkness at two sets apiece. Anderson, a 6-foot-8 (2.03-meter) South African, won the first two sets 7-6 (6), 7-6 (6) before Djokovic took the next two 6-1, 6-4.
   Third-seeded Vasek "Anything Is" Pospisil and Jack Sock "It To Me," the defending champions in men's doubles, lost to No. 13 Jamie "Farr" Murray, Andy's older brother, and John Peers 6-3, 7-6 (6), 6-7 (5), 3-6, 8-6 in the third round.
   Men's quarterfinal matchups -- "Cheech" Marin Cilic (9) vs. Djokovic (1) or Anderson (14), Stan "The Man" Wawrinka (4) vs. Richard "Don't Blow A" Gasquet (21), Andy "Bill" Murray (3) vs. Pospisil, Roger Federer "Express" (2) vs. Simon (12).  
   Women's quarterfinal matchups -- Williams (1) vs. Victoria "Station" Azarenka (23), Maria "Shriver" Sharapova (4) vs. CoCo "Chanel" Vandeweghe, Timea "Ted" Bacsinszky (15) vs. Muguruza (20), Agnieszka "Moorehead" Radwanska (13) vs. Madison "Where The Hell Are My" Keys (21). 
   Stars and stripes -- The United States has three women in the quarterfinals, the nation's most at Wimbledon since 2004. The last remaining U.S. man, Denis Kudla, lost to Cilic, the reigning U.S. Open champion, in four sets.
   Fast facts -- Serena Williams improved to 36-1 this season, losing only to Petra Kvitova on clay in the Madrid semifinals in May, and extended her Grand Slam winning streak to 25 matches.
   Northern California connection -- Top seeds and former Stanford stars Bob and Mike Bryan, seeking their fourth Wimbledon men's doubles title, reached the quarterfinals with a 7-6 (4), 6-3, 6-1 victory over Mate Pavic of Croatia and Michael Venus of New Zealand.
   Fifth-seeded Raquel Kops-Jones, a San Jose resident and ex-Cal standout, and Abigail Spears equaled their best Wimbledon result in women's doubles by advancing to the quarters. They beat Hao-Ching Chan of Taiwan and Alison Van Uytvanck of Belgium 6-2, 6-4.
   Meanwhile, the women's doubles teams of Anabel Medina Garrigues (California Dream of World TeamTennis)-Arantxa Parra Santonja and Jarmila Gajdosova (Dream)-Ajla Tomljanovic had tough matchups.
   Medina Garrigues and Parra Santonja lost to top-seeded Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza 6-4, 6-3. Gajdosova and Tomljanovic fell to third-seeded Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Safarova, who are continuing their quest for a calendar-year Grand Slam, 7-5, 6-2.
   In the second round of mixed doubles, Medina Garrigues and Robert Lindstedt toppled 13th-seeded Michaella Krajicek and Florin Mergea 3-6, 6-3, 6-2. Krajicek's brother, Richard, won the Wimbledon men's singles title in 1996.
   Quote -- No. 26 seed Nick "I'm Just" Kyrgios, who, during his four-set loss to Gasquet, went over to embrace a ballboy: "I just felt like a hug, I guess. Everyone, now and then, wants a hug."
   Today's top matches -- Centre Court (beginning at 5 a.m. PDT on ESPN) : Sharapova (4) vs. Vandeweghe, Williams (1) vs. Azarenka (23).
   Court 1 (beginning at 5 a.m. PDT on ESPN2): Djokovic (1) vs. Anderson (14) in completion of suspended match, Bacsinszky (15) vs. Muguruza (20), Radwanska (13) vs. Keys (21).