By the end of Serena Williams’ 44-minute 6-1, 6-0 obliteration of China’s Wang Qiang on Tuesday night she seemed unplayable. Wang was competing in her first career grand slam quarter-final but the truth is she was merely a spectator. She hit zero winners and won only four points in the second set. “After playing her, now I can see why she deserves everything she’s achieved,” she said in Chinese afterwards. However, Williams is focused only on achieving more. As she waved to the crowd in celebration, the camera just caught her face as she whispered four ominous words under her breath: “I’m coming for it.”
The situation is not new. Since returning from pregnancy 16 months ago Williams has reached three grand slam finals. For anyone else this would be a terrific achievement but in each of her straight-sets defeats – by Angelique Kerber, Naomi Osaka and Simona Halep – she has been unable to find her form under pressure and her performances have been deemed a disaster. “Everyone, even when I’m three months out of pregnancy, they still expect me to win,” she said this week.
This time Williams seems different. The clash against Maria Sharapova forced her to be ready from the beginning and her recovery from a set down to the 17 year-old Caty McNally seemingly prepared her for the trials ahead. She has played cleanly and smartly throughout, the only true scare being a slightly sprained ankle in her fourth-round victory over Petra Martic. It was a reminder of the frailty of her 38 year-old body after an injury-ravaged year.
In the semi-final Williams will face the fifth seed, Elina Svitolina, whose career is a prime example of the mental challenge that tennis presents.
The 24-year-old has been one of the best players in the world in recent years, winning four Premier 5 titles, ascending to the top three. But every time it came to a grand slam event she would find her powers diminished. Amid all her titles her best results until this summer were three quarter-finals. She has called the biggest events “tricky” because of the pressure, the feeling of a huge target on her back.
Svitolina arrived at Wimbledon this year in perhaps the worst form of her career, losing seven of her previous eight matches. But with no pressure and a kind draw she quietly moved through to her first grand slam semi-final on her worst surface. It seems to have freed her and this week she has not dropped a set, overcoming difficult opposition in the Cincinnati champion, Madison Keys, and Britain’s Johanna Konta in the last round here.
Svitolina has no big weapon, but she does everything quite well. Her return is excellent and her serve is surprisingly effective. Her movement is the base of her game but she can also step in. She will force Williams to hit that extra ball and she will attack when opportunities appear. Svitolina won their last meeting at the 2016 Olympics and she will relish playing against a player who must shoulder most of the pressure and expectations. The onus will be on Williams to stand up to the occasion. Otherwise the pressure will come for her again.
