Coco Gauff, the 15-year-old who beat Venus Williams in her Wimbledon debut, advanced to the third round on Wednesday.
Gauff swept Slovak Magdaléna Rybáriková 6-3, 6-3.
“You can kind of fake it till you make it,” she said. “But I’m not faking it, at least right now.”
Gauff, already the youngest player in the Open Era to reach the Wimbledon main draw through qualifying, is now the youngest to make round three since Jennifer Capriati in 1991.
She next gets Slovenian Polona Hercog, who upset 17th seed Madison Keys in the second round. Gauff said she stayed up until 12:30 a.m. after her win over the 39-year-old Williams on Monday.
“I could lie and say I felt normal,” Gauff said, noting that celebrities messaged her on social media, including actresses Navia Robinson and Storm Reid. “It was honestly so hard just with social media and everything trying to focus on my next match because people are still posting about Venus.
Earlier Wednesday, top-ranked Novak Djokovic breezed past American Denis Kudla 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 to make the third round for an 11th straight year.
Despite the straightforward score, however, the defending champ was short of perfection as he moves toward a fifth title at the All England Club. His serve was broken twice, once in each of the first two sets.
“There were some moments in the match where maybe I could have done better,” the Serb said. “Dropped a couple of times my serve.”
Djokovic will next face Hubert Hurkacz on Friday, and then could face 18-year-old Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime on Monday if they both reach the fourth round.
Reilly Opelka, a 6-foot-11 American, took out three-time major champ Stan Wawrinka 7-5, 3-6, 4-6, 6-4, 8-6.
Opelka, who had 23 aces to reach his first Slam third round, next gets 2016 Wimbledon runner-up Milos Raonic of Canada.
“At first I had a lot of success serving and volleying, so I kept with that,” Opelka said. “And then as he kind of picked up on what I was doing and started reading my serve a little bit, it was more difficult for me to win points at the net. So I had to play, played a lot of tennis on the baseline today.”
Serena Williams, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are the headliners in second-round action Thursday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
WIMBLEDON: Scores | Men’s Draw | Women’s Draw
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