Li Na won her fourteenth grand slam match of the year when she won her first round match two days back. Although she did win the first set quite comfortably at 6-2 games, her second set was from comfortable as she had few misplaced groundstrokes, lacking the slight sharpness still. Despite that, she is still the reigning French Open champion and has climbed up to a career-high fourth entering this grass court grand slam event. Today though, she does face a very rampant opponenet in Sabine Lisicki, who have asceneded up the rankings at such a rapid pace, after her injury-ravaged 2010 year.

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The German was victorious at Birmingham two weeks back. And entering this match, she is 7-0 on grass this season, raking up 14-0 sets which shows her superioty on this surface. In her earlier match on friday, she swept aside her opponent with absolute ease, winning with a score of 6-1 6-1 in less than an hour. The only meeting between the two did happen earlier this year when the German narrowly beat the Chinese player 6-4 7-5. I really do expect this to be a mighty close affair but the experience of Li Na should just take her through in what promises to be a brusing encounter.

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Pick: Li Na 2-1