Serena Williams

BBC
Andy Murray negotiated the threat of big-serving Ivo Karlovic to reach the third round of Wimbledon.

The fourth seed had won all three of their previous meetings but this was the first on grass and 6ft 10ins Karlovic tested Murray throughout, reports the BBC.

But the Scot responded well to dropping the second set and stayed strong in the fourth to win 7-5 6-7 (7-5) 6-2 7-6 (7-4) in over three hours on Centre Court.

He will play Marcos Baghdatis or Grigor Dimitrov in the last 32 on Saturday.
In other games, Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova booked their place in the Wimbledon third round with contrasting victories at the All England Club.

Four-time Wimbledon champion Williams brushed aside Melinda Czink 6-1 6-4 in under an hour on Centre Court.

Resuming 7-6 3-1 after bad light stop play, top seed Sharapova lost a second set tie-break before easing home 6-0.

Sharapova faces Taipei's Su-Wei Hsieh in the next round while sixth seed Williams takes on China's Zheng Jie.

French Open champion Sharapova, who won her first Grand Slam on the grass courts of Wimbledon in 2004, was in the ascendancy against her Bulgarian opponent when bad light stopped play on Wednesday evening.

On resumption, the Russian, 25, started the more tentative of the two players, as Pironkova broke back and then battled on to win the second set tie-break and level the match.

But Sharapova regrouped and stepped it up in the final set, breaking her opponent three times to win the set to love.

Williams, who last won this tournament in 2010, had a much smoother ride in her second-round match against the Hungarian qualifier Czink.

The 30-year-old American blitzed the first set 6-1 in 20 minutes and though Czink put up more of a fight in the second, Williams never left second gear to set up a tie against 2008 Wimbledon semi-finalist Zheng who beat Aleksandra Wozniak 6-4 6-2.

Ninth seed Marion Bartoli, who lost to Venus Williams in the 2007 Wimbledon final and won the title in Eastbourne last year, lost her second round match against Mirjana Lucic of Croatia.

Lucic, who as a 17-year-old was the lowest ranked player ever to reach a Grand Slam semi-final back at Wimbledon 1999, beat the Frenchwoman 6-4 6-3.

Elsewhere, eighth seed Angelique Kerber beat Ekaterina Makarova 7-5 6-3 to set up a third-round tie with Christina McHale, the 28th seed, who defeated Mathilde Johansson 7-5 7-5.

Former world number one Ana Ivanovic beat Ukraine's Kateryna Bondarenko 6-3 7-6 (7-3) to set up a meeting German 22nd seed Julia Goerges.