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Andy Murray column: Serena Williams was making me laugh at Wimbledon


Andy Murray column: Serena Williams was making me laugh at Wimbledon

July 4, 2019 at 2:12 PM

Playing alongside Serena at Wimbledon has been great fun so far and, as I joked after our first match, we are both younger siblings - so we are very competitive.

We want to have a few more days and matches playing together, hopefully until the final on Sunday.

I wouldn't say anything has particularly surprised me about Serena as a player or a person, even though I didn't know her particularly well before we played and we have not spent loads of time together.

But you expect someone who has been as successful as she has to be extremely competitive - and she is.

Even though it is mixed doubles, and her priority is singles, she goes out there and wants to win every point.

Her record speaks for itself and the more matches she plays, her performances and level will only increase.

We played better in our second-round match against 14th seeds Fabrice Martin and Raquel Atawo than we did in the first round, and I'm sure we will continue to improve as we get more matches under our belts.

We have put pressure on our opponents in all four of the sets we have played and created a lot of break-point chances, and I think as the matches go on we will get better at converting them.

What I think has worked particularly well so far is our returning games. Some of Serena's returning - especially in our second match - was brilliant.

Martin is a really tall guy and was serving huge, but she put a lot of returns in play on the first serve and then she took big cuts at the returns on the second serve and was making a lot of them.

That is not an easy thing to do and she won't have been used to returning serves of that size. And if you think how little she has been playing, the way she is picking that up is special. It's not something everyone can do.

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