Serena Williams of the USA, left, and playing partner Venus Williams of the United States sit and talk during a change of ends as they play against Elena Vesnina of Russian Federation, bottom right and Ekaterina Makarova of Russian Federation during their women’s doubles tennis match on day eleven of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Thursday, July 7, 2016.
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Venus and Kerber were next to take the court, with tournament organizers delaying the second match a bit due to how quickly Serena won.
Defeat ended a 100 per cent record in Wimbledon singles semi-finals for Williams, after eight previous successes. But, in the third set, the sisters found their groove again, breaking Vesnina and Makarova at 3-2 and then finishing out the set.
The Williams sisters have combined for 11 singles titles at Wimbledon and five as a doubles team – the last coming in 2012. “She won so many Grand Slams”, Kerber said.
Rarely can a loser have waved her conqueror on to a grand slam final with such bonhomie as Elena Vesnina, who shared Centre Court with Serena Williams for 48 minutes on Thursday afternoon. Kerber defeated Serena back at the Australian Open final this year.
Venus Williams is planning to return to Wimbledon next year to make her 20th appearance confident in the belief that there is no such thing in life as impossible.
She garnered a mere 21 points, four of them from aces, to Williams’s 53, as she tried hard to make a contest of a mismatch.
Kerber, the No. 4 seed, has had trouble handling the pressure of her status as a Grand Slam champion after her breakthrough win at the Australian Open a few months ago. She was one of the best players in the world. Then she came unstuck against a rejuvenated Kerber in Melbourne and failed to handle the rising challenge of Garbiñe Muguruza in Paris.
Venus, who suffers with Sjogren’s syndrome, an auto-immune disease that causes chronic fatigue and muscle soreness, had her serve broken to open the match and fell behind 5-2 in the first set. But she fell short by 12 minutes.
Serena will face either five-time champion Venus or Angelique Kerber in Saturday’s final.
With Centre Court tickets for the two days both costing £126, it left some who stumped up the money on Thursday feeling short-changed. She’s the strongest one with the mentality to playing on the big courts, the big events, finals, semi-finals, grand slams.
An increasingly tired looking Williams, 36, wilted under the pressure and made a string of errors, surrendering the set by burying a forehand into the net.
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.
In the second singles semifinal Thursday, the eighth-seeded Venus was to face Kerber, a German who is seeded No. 4.
Except Serena probably gets more of a workout when she practices.
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Earlier, even if Vesnina, world ranked 50, had stepped on the court already having lost the match in her mind, she could at least have engaged one of the all-time greats of the game for at least an hour.
