I was pretty excited about it."She also revealed that her father, Richard, had advised her to take some pace off her serve in the hope of improving its accuracy "He said don't hit them 120mph if you can hit 110. Only two other women, Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf, have completed a hat-trick in the open era.Serena's next hurdle will be either France's Tatiana Golovin or Switzerland's Emmanuelle Gagliardi, who were level in the third set of their third-round match last night when rain stopped play.Neither will have a prayer on the champion's form yesterday, of which she gave an accurate assessment. Two was the number of sets she needed to brush aside Spain's Magui Serna, 6-4, 6-0. Williams's brutal power and deceptively swift movement were the familiar tools in her victory.Three is the number of consecutive Wimbledon singles titles Serena will have won if she can win four more matches here this fortnight. Capriati, who has split from coach Heinz G?ardt because she got frustrated with the amount of time he was spending commentating on Swiss television, laboured to a 7-5, 6-1 win over Nathalie Dechy yesterday.Having missed much of the early months of the year through injury, Capriati says she's feeling fresher, but has been bothered by the rain."It's hard with all the delays," she said "It breaks up your rhythm. I feel like I came [to Wimbledon] with a really good rhythm, really sharp, but with the rain you sit around, and it's hard not to get sluggish and lose that quickness.". Serena Williams doesn't do maths.

When asked yesterday what she thought she might be doing 20 years hence, she calculated she would be aged 32 instead of 42 Serena Williams doesn't do maths. So I got a little frustrated with that, which I shouldn't, but I don't get worried about it."I enjoy serving and volleying, and I enjoy mixing up the slice backhand and the hit-through backhand, which makes me feel comfortable on grass. She is suffering from a thigh strain picked up in her semi-final defeat to Daniela Hantuchova in Eastbourne, which needs daily treatment and which she says "comes and goes". And she suffered from her serve deserting her midway through the second set of yesterday's match."I didn't serve quite as well as I wanted," she said, "and not as well as I did in my last match. It's also good for my game the rest of the year, too."Jennifer Capriati, who beat Serena Williams in the French Open quarter-finals, is seeded to meet Williams in the same round here, though she has a tough fourth round match today against Nadia Petrova. She smiled wryly when saying it was "interesting" to see just how much attention is foisted on Tim Henman by the British media, and clearly believes her chances are aided by so much less interest in her than she has to deal with at Roland Garros.She also looks the most classical grass court player left in the women's draw, though whether she has the consistency, and the fitness, to damage Serena Williams, her likely semi-final opponent, remains to be seen.

The fourth-seeded French woman cruised to a 6-1, 6-4 win over Ludmila Cervanova, although her performance gave little indication about how she is likely to handle the latter stages of the tournament.Mauresmo is enjoying watching the media frenzy focus on someone other than her. With Venus Williams and Anastasia Myskina gone from the bottom half of the draw, Sprem is entitled to wonder whether she can go all the way to the final here.In the top half of the draw Am?e Mauresmo still looks the biggest obstacle to Serena Williams winning a third consecutive title. Sprem had considerable difficulty handling the American's serve and trailed for much of the first set. She won it on a 7-5 tie-break, but then couldn't get away from Shaughnessy in the second set until 6-5 when she served for the match, only to be broken. But Sprem was never behind in the tie-break, which she won 7-2.Sprem today plays Maggie Maleeva, the Bulgarian veteran who dismissed Denisa Chladkova 7-5, 6-3 to reach the fourth round for only the third time in 12 visits to Wimbledon.