Elena Vesnina expects Serena Williams to win her seventh Wimbledon title after the Russian suffered a crushing semi-final defeat to the reigning champion on Thursday.
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The champion quickly wrapped up her quickfire victory, finishing two minutes quicker than the previous semi-final record which was set when Venus hammered Dinara Safina in 2009.
LONDON (AP) – Venus Williams’ deepest Grand Slam run in a half-dozen years ended one victory short of what would have been yet another Wimbledon title match against her sister Serena.
Williams blitzed Vesnina 6-2 in the first set and followed that up with a 6-0 bagel against her outgunned opponent.
Vesnina won just three points off the Williams serve in the first set and none in the second.
Kerber beat Serena in the Australian Open final in January to lift her first grand slam title. She lost the final against me and I know she will go out and try everything to beat me right now.
She certainly made it look easy though, winning 96 percent of the points on her first serve, never facing a break point and hitting a remarkable 28 winners to just seven unforced errors. I did serve and volley couple of times. “Now I’m just a little bit more calm”, she said.
It was the first time that Serena had lost two Grand Slam finals in a row.
She had raced through her six matches at Wimbledon without dropping a set and now has a WTA tour-best 34 match wins this year and is guaranteed to rise to a career-high second in the world rankings next week. This is a complete new tournament, on a different surface.
But her losses to Kerber at Melbourne Park, after a stunning semi-final slip up against Roberta Vinci in the 2015 US Open semi-finals, then to Garbine Muguruza in last month’s Roland Garros decider is evidence enough the all-conquering world No.1 is once again vulnerable with it all on the line.
Instead it is Kerber who will face Serena in Saturday’s match – a repeat of this year’s Australian Open final in which Kerber won.
Serena, a six-time champion at the All England Club, will be first on Centre Court against Elena Vesnina in the semifinals.
“Service is very important for me, I think, in general”, stated Serena Williams during her semifinal press conference”.
“Venus won so many times here and was playing really well. I know that I have to play my best tennis”.
“I felt like I had no chance today”, the 29-year-old said.
Kerber said that wearing down her 36-year-old rival was part of her strategy.
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Williams warmed to her topic, insisting that the dedication to her sport which she developed as a child on the public courts and in the tough neighbourhoods of Los Angeles should not be treated less seriously just because of her sex.
