Cavaday is just one win away from ensuring her Wimbledon spot

Naomi Cavaday kept the British flag flying in Wimbledon qualifying at Roehampton to move to within one victory of the main draw.

The British number six had breezed past Rika Fujiwara in the first round but found life much tougher against German 20th seed Angelique Kerber.

Cavaday, 20, excelled early on against a player ranked 154 places higher than her at 132 in the world.

Kerber recovered to win the second set, but the Kent woman won 6-0 3-6 7-5.

Cavaday is battling back up the rankings after a debilitating virus forced her out of action for five months last year and is aiming for a fourth main-draw appearance at Wimbledon.

She has yet to win in the senior draw at SW19 but two of her matches have been against Venus Williams and Martina Hingis. She memorably held two match points against Hingis in 2007 before going down in three sets.

There was disappointment in the men's draw, however, with Britain's three remaining hopefuls all losing in the second round.

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British number eight Alex Slabinsky was beaten 7-6 (7-4) 6-1 by fourth seed Roko Karanusic, Marcus Willis succumbed 6-2 6-4 to Italy's Andrea Stoppini while fellow teenager Josh Milton went down 3-6 6-4 6-2.

Cavaday, who must beat Russian Vesna Manasieva to progress to Wimbledon, was delighted with the battling spirit she showed to come through.

She needed to save a match point at 3-4 in the decider against Kerber, and afterwards she said: "I did start off playing very well, which is hard to maintain against a player who gets a lot of balls back.

"To her credit she changed things in the second set because she had to. She's a tough player and I did really well to hang in there. I'm glad that I'm forcing players to play their best tennis against me to compete.

"I'm really pleased and proud of the way I got back into the third set. I was slightly tougher in the end."

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