Aryna Sabalenka makes cheers her own to meet the moment, while Amanda Anisimova finds range at right time

Day 5 at Wimbledon—the July 4th holiday in the States—looked a lot like the tournament’s first four days.

The sun kept shining. At least one fan needed medical attention, and a helpful bottle of water from a player. A top-tier contender—in this case, No. 6 seed Madison Keys—was sent packing. And Taylor Fritz played tennis. The American’s fourth straight day on court resulted in his third win, and the first that didn’t require five sets.

There was a lot more, of course; we’re not halfway home yet, and singles matches are still strewn around the grounds. Here are three takeaways from the first Friday.

Aryna Sabalenka met the moment at a major

It’s been a weird year for the WTA’s No. 1 player.

In some ways, it has been Sabalenka’s best and most consistent season. She’s 45-8, has won three titles, reached both Slam finals, and put herself 4,000 points ahead of everyone else.

In other ways, it has been her most disappointing. Despite leaving everyone else in the rankings dust, she has lost the two matches that mattered most, in the Australian Open and Roland Garros finals, to opponents she was heavily favored to beat, Madison Keys and Coco Gauff, 6-4 in the third set each time.

On Friday, Sabalenka was faced with another dangerous moment at a major, against another player she was favored to beat. The match wasn’t a final, and the opponent, Emma Raducanu, was only ranked 40th. But it wasn’t her ranking that struck fear into Sabalenka’s heart. It was the fact that she was the home favorite.

“Facing British at Wimbledon, I’m not sure I prefer that,” Sabalenka admitted, when she was asked about the prospect of playing Raducanu.

Sabalenka has had her issues with partisan crowds before, and she was right to worry about this one. Raducanu came out revved up and firing, and the Centre Court fans responded, their roars bouncing off the roof above. The Brit broke early, served for the first set, and reached set point in the tiebreaker. Sabalenka was again playing rattled, trying for too much, missing balls she would never miss in any other situation. As always, her exasperated facial expressions told the story of the match.

So what did Sabalenka do then? She tried, and made, two difficult drop shots.

Serving at 5-6 in the tiebreaker, she seemed to be reeling. She had just lost two points, and failed to capitalize on other easy chances. Was she going to let her surroundings unravel her again? At 5-6, when she went for a backhand drop, it looked like a panic move, and the ball seemed to be heading for the net. But when it cleared it by an inch, and bounced twice before a stunned Raducanu, Sabalenka looked like a genius.

Two points later, up 7-6, with her own set point, Sabalenka repeated herself. Reaching high for a forehand volley at net, she dropped it jut over the net for another touch winner. The crowd was quieted at last.

Sabalenka said she had found a way—possibly borrowed from Novak Djokovic—to use the audience to her advantage.

“I was trying to trick my brain, and I was pretending that people were cheering for me,” she said. “Sometimes when they were screaming ‘Emma,’ it sounded like ‘Aryna.’”

“I think that’s why I wasn’t really getting, like, annoyed by that.”

The second set followed the same pattern. Again, Raducanu broke early. Again, the audience backed her. Again, she threatened to run away with it, this time earning a break point for 5-1. But again, Sabalenka found a way back.

The shot that stuck out for me came with Raducanu serving at 4-2, down break point. Sabalenka had missed numerous returns on break points. This time she aimed her backhand down the line with pace, but also with plenty of margin, and finished the point from there. Unlike at Roland Garros, she found the balance of power and control when she needed to.

Afterward, Sabalenka referenced her meltdown in Paris.

“I was just keep telling myself, ‘No, you just cannot let it happen again. Whatever happens on the court, you just have to be respectful, you have to be calm.’”

“I’m super happy that I was able to be that focused.”

This time she faced the fans, the moment, the crowd, and found her best.

With opportunity knocking, Osaka and Anisimova played with an extra edge. It worked, for one of them

Each time Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova set up to serve, she—along with everyone else inside Court 2—could hear a pair of loud smacks coming from the other side of the court. That was the sound of Naomi Osaka’s left hand slapping her left thigh, hard. This would have been distracting to most players, but Pavlyuchenkova seemed too dialed in to let it bother her.

At the same time over on Court 3, Amanda Anisimova was also making a noise that could have been bothersome to an opponent: After hitting a winning shot, she would emit a higher-pitched shriek than I’d ever heard from her; something in the ear-splitting range of the “Pojd!” that Petra Kvitova made famous. Anisimova’s foe, Dalma Galfi, gestured across the net after a couple of these shrieks. It was hard to tell if she was annoyed by them, but it wouldn’t have been a surprise.

Anisimova and Osaka, as anyone could hear, were playing with a little bit of extra desperation. That’s because both of them were in the second quarter of the women’s draw, a section that had already lost its three highest seeds. That means there’s a major opportunity for a surprise player to make the semifinals; before Friday, Anisimova and Osaka were the best-known of the bunch that remained.

But as their results showed, desperation will only get you so far.

Anisimova and Osaka are both among the streakiest players in tennis. When they connect, it’s a winner; when they don’t, it’s an error. And you never know which is going to happen from one match—or set, or game, or swing—to the next. Not surprisingly, each won one the first set and lost the second.

In the end, their results may have come down to who they were playing.

Anisimova’s opponent, Dalma Galfi, has never been ranked higher than No. 79; Osaka’s opponent, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, has been in the Top 10 and reached a major final.

In the final set of Anisimova’s match, Galfi’s mid-pace shots were feeding into the American’s more powerful strokes. Credit to Anisimova for finding her range at the right time.

Pavlyuchenkova, by contrast, was strong enough to create her own winning shots when she needed them. Serving at 4-4 in the second set, Pavlyuchenkova went down double break point—possibly one point from defeat. She responded with an ace and a service winner. At 3-3 in the third, Pavlyuchenkova faced another break point; Osaka had just won three straight games, and was threatening to pull ahead. This time, Pavlyuchenkova took a full swing at the first backhand she saw and fired it into the far corner for a winner. It was enough to make Osaka look across at her in disbelief and anguish.

“I feel a little bit of pressure because obviously you feel like the opportunity is there,” said Anisimova, who will play Linda Noskova in the round of 16. “I keep reminding myself to just focus on the present, just take it one match at a time.”

For Osaka, whose chance was gone, the emotions were obviously very different—or even non-existent.

“I’m just going to be a negative human being today,” she said. “[After losing] in Paris I was very emotional. Now I don’t feel anything, so I guess I’d prefer to feel nothing than everything.”

Nicolas Jarry is healthy again—and making himself a threat

Tennis players have to deal with all sorts of injuries and ailments, from their knees to their backs to their hips to their minds. But their ears?

You only have to ask Nicolas Jarry how brutal an ear issue can be. Last year he was diagnosed with vestibular neuritis, an inner ear inflammation that causes vertigo and balance problems.

“I had the issue which affected my perception, my balance, and I’ve been trying to come back and recover," an emotional Jarry said after his four-set win over Joao Fonseca. “It’s been physically, emotionally and psychologically very tough.”

If his six wins at this year’s Wimbledon—three in qualifying, three in the main draw—are any evidence, the ordeal has only made the 6-foot-7 Chilean tougher and hungrier at 29.

He came from two sets down to beat No. 8 seed Holger Rune in the first round. He made quick work of a potentially tricky opponent in Learner Tien. And he held off a fierce comeback bid from Fonseca and his Brazilian faithful on Friday.

In the fourth set, Jarry saved three break points in two different service games. In the tiebreaker, he went down 2-4, before blazing through the last five points with a string of brilliant shots, including a second serve ace.

The win puts Jarry, who is the grandson of former player Jaime Fillol, into the fourth round at Wimbledon for the first time.

“I came here with him when I was 10 years old and 11,” he says of Fillol. “Since then, I’m in love with this tournament. Every match that I win here makes me stay a couple more days in the tournament, and that makes me very happy.”

Jarry, with his strong serve and forehand, could be a tough out going forward. Next for him is Cam Norrie, and after that, possibly, Carlos Alcaraz.