Rubin rises to the challenge

Chanda Rubin overcame her American compatriot, Amy Frazier, 6-4 6-4 in the second round at Wimbledon yesterday.

The 64-minute match was closer than the scoreline suggests and it was certainly no easy ride for the No 7 seed. Frazier has been ranked as high as 13 in the world and while her ranking is now a lowly 51, she was not an opponent that Rubin could take lightly.

Having suffered with injuries on and off for several years, the 27-year-old Rubin is coming back into form. She has won two title this year, Madrid and the Wimbledon warm-up event in Eastbourne where she beat the veteran Conchita Martinez in three sets.

Frazier won the toss and elected to receive serve - in a match where there were ten breaks of serve, it made very little difference to the outcome.

Both players are seasoned campaigners and while this is Rubin's eleventh Wimbledon, the 30-year-old Frazier was competing here for the 15th time. Both are equally comfortable at the back of the court or at the net and have games more in keeping with the style of play pre-Williams' sisters, which makes a change from the power players of today. Rubin, who has more weight of shot and is prepared to serve-and-volley, managed to capitalise on the important points and broke her opponent in the decisive game of each set.

In the ninth game Rubin held her serve to love and broke in the following game when Frazier pushed a forehand long to take the set 6-4. The second set continued the way of the first with Frazier breaking in the first game. A bad service game at 3-2, where the Michigan resident lost concentration - due to the net machine not detecting blatant let calls - rattled Frazier and she lost her serve.

Rubin became tentative whilst serving for the match at 5-3. A double fault put her two game points down and although she followed this with an ace she then hit a backhand approach shot long to drop serve. She made no mistakes in the following game and won with a backhand winner down the line on her second match point to set up a third round clash with the Italian 27th seed Silvia Farina Elia, who beat the American Maureen Drake 7-6 6-1.