Six-time Wimbledon champion Serena Williams is back in the semifinals at the All England Club.
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There may have been prizes being handed out to anyone outside her small entourage who could spell Pavlyuchenkova’s surname right but quite a few would have been impressed by her attitude although Serena Williams broke her in the ninth game in both sets for a 6-4, 6-4 victory.
Serena is known as one of the fiercest competitors to ever play any sport.
“I won the last point and that’s what counts”, Kerber said.
Midway through the second set, Pavlyuchenkova plastered a forehand pass down the line.
Serena added that she and Venus don’t really talk about playing each other.
That sequence typified a tight test. On No. 1 court, five-time champion Venus Williams is up against Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan. When she does, Williams sometimes speeds up the start of her motion and decelerates slightly on contact. Williams would not be drawn on that, but she accepted her story had a whiff of Hollywood about it, and that there could yet be a happy ending.
More importantly, she’s banging the slider wide with authority, a key stroke in her SW19 success.
However, perhaps the 5ft3in Cibulkova’s main problem would not be her opponent but fatigue: It had taken her over three hours and an exhausting 9-7 final set to beat Radwanska the day before.
“It would be great”, she said. “There was a bit of breeze out there as well”. “I felt today a little bit flat”.
Having rebounded from a 5-2 deficit in a first-set tiebreaker to defeat Yaroslava Shvedova 7-6 (5), 6-2, she had arrived at her first Grand Slam semifinal since the 2010 U.S. Open, as the oldest Wimbledon semifinalist since a 37-year-old Martina Navratilova in 1994.
Shvedova was playing in the Wimbledon quarterfinals for the first time but Venus Williams has five Wimbledon titles, the first coming in 2000.
Williams, the 8th seed, is in her first grand slam semi since the US Open six years ago and will face Germany’s fourth-seeded Angelique Kerber. Then Angelique Kerber beat Serena in this year’s Australian Open final and Garbine Muguruza did the same at Roland Garros.
“The McHale match really helped me”, Sportingnews.com’s Peter Hanson quoted her as saying. It’s so cool, it’s great.
It will be of significant regret that she did not progress further given that she is ranked 31 players above the unseeded Russian, but Cibulkova maintains that will be all out of her system by the time her big day comes around. Vesnina’s power and accuracy on Wimbledon’s Court One saw her comfortably ease past the Slovak, who may have had to postpone her wedding on Saturday had she made it through.
“Well, clearly it was one of her best days on the court”, Venus said of Kerber’s win over Serena.
Nine breaks of serve punctuated the first set.
Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia returns to Elena Vesnina of Russian Federation during their women’s singles match on day nine of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Tuesday, July 5, 2016. With double faults becoming a problem Williams was allowed to win the next service game to close out the first set.
Williams was rarely troubled by Pavlyuchenkova, serving well to maintain control throughout the match. She frustrated the American by varying her pace well and mixing in slices and dropshots.
“I think actually it was a good match, on a really high level from both of us”, Kerber said. Once again, this is Serena’s grand slam to lose as she chases title No. 22 for the fourth time. “So it’s unusual that I have such a strong, hard serve”, she said.
She also never imagined her ordeal.
“It’s great. I say this constantly”.
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The Williams sisters are back in the semifinals of a major – and a pair of wins away from facing each other for a Grand Slam trophy, which would be the first time since Wimbledon in 2009. The two sisters have won 11 of the previous 16 Wimbledon titles and, while neither of them are yet in the locker room for the final, their genetics tell us there’s a good chance. We have to get out there and play well to win’. “With everything she’s been through, it’s built a ton of character in her – and in me just by being around her”.
