Serena digs deep to blast out major warning
SERENA Williams faced her biggest challenge of the tournament so far but came through it in emphatic fashion by beating Italy’s Camila Giorgi 3-6 6-3 6-4 to reach the Wimbledon semi-finals for the eleventh time in her career.
Williams, who is now just two wins away from claiming her eighth Wimbledon title, will next take on Germany’s Julia Goerges, who beat Kiki Bertens 3-6 7-5 6-1.
Playing only her fourth tournament after taking a 14-month break to have her first child, Williams dropped her first set of the tournament and needed to produce her best serving performance so far.
Giorgi, who was attempting to become the first Italian woman to reach the semi-finals, gave as good as she got for two sets, but in the decider she had no answer to Williams’ powerful serving.
“I feel good,” Williams said afterwards. “I feel like I did better today. I had to. But this is only my fourth tournament back, so I don’t feel pressure. I don’t feel I have to win this. I don’t feel I have to lose this.
“I’m just here just to be here and to prove that I’m back, but I’ve still got a long way to go to be back to where I was.”
Until Williams played her first-round match here last week she had barely been able to practise her serve after pulling out of the French Open last month with a pectoral muscle injury.
The former World No.1 has been gradually turning up the power through the tournament and by the end of this quarter-final she had settled into a superb serving rhythm. In the final set she raised her average serve speed by more than 5mph compared with the opening set.
No player in the tournament has won a higher percentage of first serve points (79 per cent) or hit more unreturned first serves (104 out of 206) than Williams, whose tally of 39 aces in her first five matches is bettered only by Goerges’ total of 44.
Italy has produced a number of world-class female players in recent years, but Flavia Pennetta, Francesca Schiavone and Roberta Vinci all produced their best results on clay or hard courts. Giorgi is an exception in that she has consistently reserved her best Grand Slam performances for Wimbledon, although this was her first appearance in the quarter-finals.
As the World No.181, Williams was the lowest-ranked Wimbledon quarter-finalist in the open era, but reaching the semi-finals means she is guaranteed to climb back into the top 60 next week. If she reaches the final she will be in the top 30, and if she wins the title she will break the top 20.
All three sets were decided by single breaks of serve. In the first, Giorgi (left) broke in the sixth game, Williams missing a backhand on the Italian’s second break point. At 5-3, Giorgi went to set point courtesy of a big backhand and converted it with an unreturned serve.
Williams finally made her
first break of serve when leading 2-1 in the second set. You might have expected a big roar of celebration when she hit a big forehand cross-court winner on break point, but Williams simply turned and got on with her work.
Perhaps she was saving her energy for when it really mattered. When she levelled the match by converting her second set point at 5-3, the American bellowed out a huge cry of “C’mon!”
At 1-1 in the third set, Williams finally went ahead in the match for the first time. Giorgi’s double fault on the first point opened the door, which Williams then kicked down with three magnificent shots. Two thumping forehands won the next two points, and at 0-40 the American produced a sensational backhand winner down the line when under attack.
Williams served superbly for the rest of the match. At 5-4 she went 40-0 up with an ace and then converted her first match point by forcing Giorgi into a forehand error.
The American paid credit to her opponent afterwards. “Every time I play Giorgi she always plays at that level,” Williams said. “I knew going in that it wasn’t going to be an easy match.”
Goerges became only the second German to make their through to the semi-finals following Angelique Kerber’s victory over Daria Kasatkina earlier in the afternoon.
It will be the first time two German women have played in the last four of a Grand Slam tournament since Steffi Graf and Anke Huber made the semi-finals at Roland Garros in 1993.