Wimbledon Day 4 highlights: Teen saves 9 match points

Nick Kyrgios, 19, recovered after losing the first two sets and 
saved nine match points to beat 13th-seeded Richard Gasquet
in the second round. 2013 photo by Paul Bauman

    Matches of the day -- Australian wild card Nick Kyrgios (pronounced KEER-ee-ose), the youngest player in the men's singles draw at 19, saved nine match points in a 3-6, 6-7 (4), 6-4, 7-5, 10-8 victory over 13th-seeded Richard "Blow A" Gasquet of France in the second round. Kyrgios, the winner of the Colin Kaepernick look-alike contest, reached the semifinals of the $100,000 Sacramento Challenger last October despite a sore right (playing) arm. ... Second seed and two-time champion Rafael Nadal avenged a loss to Lukas Rosol two years ago in the second round with a 4-6, 7-6 (6), 6-4, 6-4 win over the Czech. Nadal, who reached the third round for the first time since 2011, saved a set point in the tiebreaker.

    Biggest upset -- Kyrgios' triumph over Gasquet.
    Biggest rout -- Five-time champion Serena Williams, seeded first, thrashed Chanelle "No. 5" Scheepers of South Africa 6-1, 6-1 in 49 minutes.
    Notable -- Former Wimbledon champions Roger Federer, seeded fourth, and Maria Sharapova, seeded fifth, won in straight sets.  ... Russian wild card Vera Zvonareva, a 29-year-old right-hander who missed 2013 because of surgery on right shoulder, ousted No. 21 seed Donna Vekic of Croatia 6-4, 6-4. Vekic will turn 18 on Saturday.
    U.S. report -- Ninth-seeded John Isner -- who topped 32-year-old Finn Jarkko Nieminen 7-6 (17), 7-6 (3), 7-5 -- is the only remaining American man after two rounds. Sam Querrey, Jack Sock and Denis Kudla lost to seeds. ... Five U.S. women have reached the third round: Williams, 30th-seeded Venus Williams, Madison "Avenue" Keys, Alison "Take A" Riske and Lauren Davis. Another, 18-year-old qualifier Victoria Duval, will meet 17-year-old Swiss Belinda Bencic, last year's Wimbledon girls champion, in the second round.
    Northern California connection -- Querrey, a San Francisco native and former Sacramento Capital in World TeamTennis, fell to 14th-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 4-6, 7-6 (2), 6-7 (4), 6-3, 14-12 in the completion of a match suspended by darkness at 9-9 in the fifth set. Querrey held a match point with Tsonga serving at 5-6 in the fifth set. ... Two former Stanford stars, Scott Lipsky and Bradley "Wrath Of" Klahn, played first-round doubles matches. Lipsky, a 32-year-old Irvine resident, and Santiago Gonzalez of Mexico beat Lukas Dlouhy of the Czech Republic and Paul Hanley of Australia 7-6 (7), 6-0, 3-6, 7-6 (3). Klahn, 23, of Poway in the San Diego area and Michael Venus of New Zealand lost to Americans Austin Krajicek and Donald "Forever" Young 7-5, 7-6 (5), 4-6, 6-0. The match featured three left-handers, the exception being Venus. Krajicek is a distant relative of 1996 Wimbledon singles champion Richard Krajicek of the Netherlands.
    Statistics -- The Isner-Nieminen tiebreaker was the second-longest in Wimbledon history behind the 20-18 marathon between Bjorn Borg and India's Premjit Lall in the first round in 1973. Isner, of course, edged Nicolas Mahut 70-68 in the fifth set in 2010 in the longest match in Wimbledon history. ... The nine match points saved by Kyrgios were the most in a Wimbledon victory since 1966, when Helga Schultze survived 11 against Janine Lieffrig.
    Quote -- The 6-foot-4 (1.93-meter) Kyrgios, who has a monster serve and forehand: “There are obviously signs that I can do something special in the sport. I’ve just got to keep my head down.”