Serena stays super calm in chase of eighth title
When Serena Williams withdrew from the French Open last month with a pectoral injury before her fourth-round match with Maria Sharapova, Williams’ coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, wasted no time seeing the bright side.
“It’s OK,” he said defiantly. “She’ll win Wimbledon.”
A little more than a month later, Williams is two matches away from doing precisely that, two matches away from tying Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles.
There were doubts about Williams’ health, form and state of mind when she arrived at the All England Club, but she has dispelled them round by round and serve by big serve.
There were many of the latter in her quarter-final victory on Tuesday over Camila Giorgi, an unseeded Italian with ample power of her own.
It was fast-twitch, hug-thebaseline tennis. Giorgi, embracing the initiative and the risks, even managed to win the first set. Though Williams was undoubtedly under duress, she never looked overwrought and drained the suspense out of the match by winning her last three service games at love.
“It’s weird, sometimes I feel, ‘Man, I’m in trouble,’” Williams,36, said. “For whatever reason, today I was so calm.’”
Her draw is one of the cushiest of her long and rich career. She has faced no one in the top 50, and though she will finally face a seeded opponent in the semifinals in No. 13 Julia Görges of Germany, Görges has never been this deep in a Grand Slam tournament in singles and lost in the first round at Wimbledon the previous five years.
Williams beat the big-serving Görges in the third round of the French Open last month.
OSTAPENKO VS KERBER
Thursday’s other semifinal will match No. 11 seed Angelique Kerber of Germany against No. 12 Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia.
Kerber, 30, and Ostapenko, 21, have never faced each other. They are from different tennis generations. They possess very different styles: Ostapenko is one of the game’s premier punchers; Kerber one of its premier counterpunchers.
But both are former Grand Slam champions back on the rise. Kerber won two Majors in 2016 and also lost in the Wimbledon final to Williams that year. Ostapenko won the French Open last year by swinging for the lines without a smidgen of self doubt. Although she folded quickly when she defended her title in Paris this year, losing in the first round, Ostapenko has played as if she has another point to prove at Wimbledon, rumbling past five opponents without dropping a set.
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