Serena, Venus on course for final clash

LONDON: Serena and Venus Williams closed in Tuesday on a fifth all-sister Wimbledon final while beaten quarter-finalist Dominika Cibulkova prepared to rush back to Slovakia to get ready for her wedding.

Six-time champion Serena reached her 10th semi-final at the All England Club with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Russia 21st seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

She goes on to face Russian world number 50 Elena Vesnina on Thursday for a place in the final.

Five-time champion Venus, seeded eight, enjoyed a 7-6 (7/5), 6-2 victory over Kazakhstan’s world number 96 Yaroslava Shvedova to reach her first Wimbledon semi-final in seven years.

The 36-year-old will now face German fourth seed and Australian Open champion Angelique Kerber who reached her second Wimbledon semifinal with a 7-5, 7-6 (7/2) win over Simona Halep, the fifth seed from Romania. Vesnina made her first semi-final at a major, by seeing off bride-to-be Cibulkova, the Slovak 19th seed, 6-2, 6-2.

“They showed Venus’s score on court and I was like ‘yaaaay’. I want her to win so bad, but not in the final if I’m there,” said defending champion Serena, who took her Grand Slam match win record to 302 — four behind Martina Navratilova’s all-time mark. SERENA KEEPS FOCUS On the potential of an all-Williams final, Serena refused to get too far ahead of herself even though she has a 4-0 winning record over Vesnina.

“We don’t really talk too much about it but we are playing doubles later so we are just happy to be in the semi-finals,” she said.

Venus is the oldest women’s semi-finalist since Martina Navratilova in 1994.

Venus, who won the last of her seven Grand Slam titles at Wimbledon in 2008, is back in the last-four of a Grand Slam for the first time since the 2010 US Open.

The American said lifting the trophy again would be “like that movie ‘Wimbledon’”.

DENIED TOILET BREAK, DOUBLES PAIR PROTEST LONDON: Pablo Cuevas and playing partner Marcel Granollers held a sit-down protest after they received warnings for threatening to urinate in a can and blasting a ball out of the court when the Uruguayan was refused a toilet break.

The 15th-seeded pair were knocked out of the men’s doubles tournament on Monday when they lost a controversial third round clash 6-3 4-6 6-4 3-6 14-12 to Jonny Marray and Adil Shamasdin.