ALL TOO EASY FOR WILLIAMS
Serena still waiting to be really tested By RIATH AL-SAMARRAI
WHILE the seeds continue to float away on the breeze, Serena Williams is putting down roots in the grass. The mystery is over how deep they go.
It would be no exaggeration to say she has butchered her four opponents to reach this stage, but it is tempting to wonder if she may have got past three of them using a head of broccoli.
An indictment of the women’s draw or a testament to the abilities of arguably the greatest player this game has known? The truth is probably somewhere in between, but the more pressing question is whether Williams is back in championship-winning form and fitness after her 13month maternity leave, or whether she has merely been shown in a flattering light by those stood opposite her.
Today’s quarter-final against Camila Giorgi will offer a greater clue, but it says an awful lot that the 5ft 6in Italian is ranked 52nd in the world and yet still stands as her biggest challenge numerically in these championships so far.
Indeed, if you tally up the rankings of Williams’s first four opponents you’ll come to 422, with the only meaningful challenge having come from the No 62 Kristina Mladenovic in the third round — it’s perhaps the tennis equivalent of beating Tunisia, Panama, Colombia and Sweden to reach a World Cup semi-final.
But, as they say, you can only beat what is front of you and the 36-year-old has not dropped a set, which continued with yesterday’s 6-2, 6-2 mauling of the Russian qualifier, Evgeniya Rodina.
By her own admission, there ‘is a lot to improve on’, and there was also a calming reminder from the 25th seed that this is only her fourth tournament since coming back in March. For that reason, an eighth Wimbledon title, and a record-equalling 24th Slam, would perhaps be the most impressive of an extraordinary bunch.
But that talk is premature, according to Williams.
‘I feel like I’m getting to where I want to be but there’s so much farther I want to go to get back where I was,’ she said after 62 minutes of light exercise, in which her movement again looked a little sluggish but her service speed continued its upward curve by reaching 118mph.
‘There’s a lot of things that I don’t know if you can tell, but I really need to work on. Hopefully I’ll start feeling better mentally as well while I am on the court.’
Would Williams have benefited from facing a seed by now, if only to get a more accurate gauge of where she stands? Her answer to a question on the subject was both short and sweet.
‘I faced a thousand and three seeds in my life, so I’m OK.’
That was a fun show of ego and there was another when it was put to her that all of the top 10 seeds had gone out, after the exit of seventh seed Karolina Pliskova.
‘I don’t think this has happened before to this extreme,’ she said.
‘But also I’ve never been ranked where I am when this has happened before, so usually I’m one of those few seeds left that’s still fighting and still in the tournament. Now that I’m not, it kind of happened.’
It continues to be the source of some amusement that she is here as the 181st ranked player in the world, and is now the lowest ranked Wimbledon quarter-finalist in the open era.
Fun facts, to add to the statistic that this 90th win at SW19 moved her third on the all-time list.
It will be fascinating to see if her body is up to adding three more in the next five days.