Sinner, Medvedev and Sabalenka reach Wimbledon round three

Defending Wimbledon champion Jannik Sinner had several members of Europe's Ryder Cup team watching his second-round clash with Nuno Borges on Wednesday and in golfing parlance he kept it straight down the middle in a relatively risk-free victory.

After the hazards he found against Serbia's Miomir Kecmanovic in a nervy five-set victory in round one, top seed Sinner rarely looked in danger as he won 7-6(4) 7-6(2) 6-4.

World number 48 Borges provided stubborn resistance and was a point away from taking the second set, but Sinner was rock-solid when it mattered as he avoided another long contest.

Sinner, the hot favourite in the absence of injured chief rival Carlos Alcaraz, failed to convert any of the three break points he earned in the opening set but stepped on the throttle in the tiebreak to take the opener.

He strayed off course at the start of the second set and sprayed a forehand long to drop his serve.

Portugal's Borges stayed ahead throughout the set, but serving at 5-4 he buried a routine backhand into the net on set point and paid the price as Sinner broke back and then reeled off six points in a row to win the second tiebreak of the match.

Sinner dominated thereafter to rack up an Italian record 95th Grand Slam match win, moving ahead of Nicola Pietrangeli.

Francesco Molinari, Italy's first winner of the British Open in 2018, was in the Royal Box along with the likes of Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose to watch the man who became Italy's first Wimbledon champion by beating Alcaraz last year.

Elsewhere, eighth seed Daniil Medvedev laboured to a 3-6 6-3 7-5 6-2 victory over Spanish Wimbledon debutant Daniel Merida in the second round.

The 30-year-old Russian took a while to find his range on Court Two against Merida, 21, a busy all-court player, who broke into the top 100 this year and is now ranked 84th in the world.

For much of the match, Medvedev, seeking a second Grand Slam trophy after winning the US Open in 2021, looked as though he found tennis a chore.

"I was lacking rhythm a little bit in the beginning," Medvedev said in a courtside interview.

But he yelled with triumph in the fourth set when he twice broke the Spaniard's serve and applauded the crowd when he took the match with a big serve that Merida could only tip into the net.

On the women's side, Aryna Sabalenka's love-hate relationship with Wimbledon's slick turf was once again on display before her survival instincts kicked in as the Belarusian subdued American McCartney Kessler 6-1 7-6(9) in the second round.

The world number one definitely loved the way the first set went but by the time Kessler had stormed to a 5-2 lead in the second, Sabalenka's thigh started to feel the full force of her frustration as she kept slapping it in anger after every missed opportunity.

Kessler, the only player to have reached the second round this year without dropping a game, appeared to be on the cusp of dragging Sabalenka into a third set as she had two set points at 5-3 and another two in the tiebreak.

But each time, Sabalenka's greater weight of shot, and experience, came to the Belarusian's rescue and she made sure her bid to win a first Grand Slam title away from hard courts stayed on track as she finally converted her third match point to end a compelling duel after one hour 39 minutes.