Stosur sprucing up her serve to hold her in good stead at Wimbledon

London, June 18(ANI): Australian tennis ace Samantha Stosur has said that she has been practising her serve "over and over" again to give her a cutting edge on grass at Wimbledon, which gets underway on Monday.

Stosur's encouraging Wimbledon tune-up continued at Eastbourne, where she beat Scotland's Elena Baltacha to progress to the semi-finals of the grass-court event. he recovered from a first-set lapse to oust Baltacha 6-7 (5-7) 6-1 6-0, and is now the highest-ranked player left in the AEGON International after early exits for top seed Caroline Wozniacki and Francesca Schiavone.

"Once I got the break in the second set, it all opened up. I started serving better and she felt under more pressure. It just built and built and built. Midway through the third I was fully in control," Fox Sports quoted Stosur, as saying.

The World No. 7's victory has set up a showdown with Russia's Ekaterina Makarova.

Baltacha had already beaten top Chinese players Li Na and Zheng Jie to become the first UK quarter-finalist since Jo Durie in 1983. (ANI)