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Venus Williams hugged Serena after defeating her 7-5, 6-4, to win her fifth Wimbledon singles title. More Photos ?
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It had been five years since they had played a Grand Slam singles final together, and the long wait resulted in one of their most intense and entertaining matches despite the gusty conditions that made Centre Court feel more like a wind tunnel.
But there is still no doubt about which Williams sister has the best record at Wimbledon.
Despite a ferocious start from Serena, Venus was able to absorb the shock and gradually impose her long-limbed presence on her favorite tennis court. Her 7-5, 6-4 victory gave her a fifth Wimbledon singles title and left Serena with two.
“I can’t believe it’s five, but when you’re in the final against Serena Williams, five seems so far away from that first point,” Venus said in her post-match remarks to the crowd. “She played so awesome. It was really a task to beat her.”
But it remains even more of a task to beat Venus at the All England Club. This was her second straight title and her third in four years.
Despite struggling this season, failing to win a tournament in the run-up to Wimbledon, she swept through the draw without dropping a set.
“She loves it here,” her hitting partner David Witt said. “She comes here, and it just seems like she just gets here and glows. She loves the grass, and obviously confidence is everything in this game.”
On grass, Venus’s huge serves and flat ground strokes penetrate like on nothing else. On grass, she is also more inclined to put her excellent volleys to use, and at 6 feet 1 inch, she covers a lot of air and space at the net.
That ability, along with Venus’s clutch serving under pressure, was one of the keys to this victory. Venus came to net 18 times and lost but three points once she did. But this was not just a day for boldness. It was a day for deep thinking and caution. With the wind playing nasty tricks on the servers, Venus repeatedly grabbed her tosses instead of hitting them and often pushed the legal time limits before serving, all too aware that her younger sister was returning very aggressively and effectively.
Venus would lose her serve once in each set, but if she had not served extremely well when she had to, she could have easily been broken on three or four more occasions. In total, Serena would fail to convert on 11 of her 13 break points.
“She was a little better today, so it didn’t work out the way I planned,” Serena said after the match.
When Serena finally did break Venus in the second set, prevailing on her seventh break point of the marathon game to take a 2-1 lead, she then lost her own serve much more quickly in the next game to let Venus get back to 2-all.
Serena looked dejected after that, and though she was still an imposing presence on the court, Venus was the more audible presence down the stretch: shrieking as she leaned into her ground strokes and playing world-class defense. Meanwhile, Serena was uncharacteristically quiet.
Perhaps it was resignation, perhaps it was frustration. After all, she had been the sister to start more strongly: taking eight of the first nine points with a flurry of winners and forcing Venus to work extremely hard to avoid turning the set into a rout. But with Serena leading, 4-2, Venus was able to build an edge.
She would win the first set by breaking Serena’s serve, and would win the match in the same fashion, taking the title when Serena knocked a two-handed backhand wide.
Unlike other years, there were no leaps in the air, no unbridled joy. But Venus was clearly delighted, and she and her sister have now each won eight matches in their 16 often anticlimactic encounters.
This, however, was one of the best.
Hot air: Venus, Serena Williams give NBC a match made in TV heaven?
09:20 PM CDT on Friday, July 4, 2008
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? ? ? Faced with the prospect of an Elena Dementieva-Zheng Jie ladies final for the Breakfast at Wimbledon broadcast this morning, NBC Sports executives resorted to a time-tested ritual. They prayed. Hard. It's not that Russia's Dementieva and China's Zheng might not have produced a final for the ages. Zheng, the 133rd-ranked player in the world, had worked to record upset after upset after upset in London. She might have had one more in her. And Dementieva, a household name in the Dementieva household, was the highest-seeded player remaining at No. 5. It's just that TV types don't like putting on fancy, well-executed productions only for friends and family. So they rooted Thursday for the American-born sixth and seventh seeds to win their semis. Serena and Venus Williams accommodated them. Easily. Serena is a two-time Wimbledon winner. Venus has won four times. Not only that, they are sisters. They are close and each other's biggest fan. There is not a TV type in the world that could have better scripted the ladies final pairing, which has a chance to appeal to an audience far beyond tennis aficionados. With an outbreak of tennis fever expected to sweep the country beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday, it seemed a good time to chat with one of TV's top tennis analysts. Here's how good Mary Carillo is. She currently collects paychecks from NBC, CBS, ESPN, HBO and USA to work the sport
By Stephen WIlson
The Associated Press
Friday, August 01, 2008
WIMBLEDON, England – Wimbledon has already lost its top four seeded women's players, and now the Williams sisters keep rolling toward another sibling final. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are also closing in on another title matchup. The fourth round play Monday at the All England Club produced more upsets at the top of the women's seedings, but also offered more convincing wins from the champions and title contenders.
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| Serena Williams reacts on her way to defeating compatriot Bethanie Mattek in their Women's Singles, fourth round match at Wimbledon on Monday. ? |
Jelena Jankovic, the No. 2 seed hobbled by a knee injury, fell 6-3, 6-2 to Tamarine Tanasugarn. No. 4 Svetlana Kuznetsova, the 2004 U.S. Open champion, lost 6-4, 1-6, 7-5 to 19-year-old Agnieszka Radwanska.
With top-seeded Ana Ivanovic and No. 3 Maria Sharapova eliminated last week, none of the top four seeded women reached the quarterfinals – the first time that has happened at Wimbledon and also the first time at any Grand Slam tournament in the 40-year history of the Open era.
The highest women's seeded player left is No. 5 Elena Dementieva, who cruised to a 6-2, 6-1 win over Shahar Peer. Only three of the top 14 seeded women remains in the brackets.
The other two are the Williams sisters, and they posted back-to-back victories on Court 2 – nicknamed the "Graveyard of Champions" for its history of upsets. They questioned why they weren't put on Centre Court or Court 1.
Defending champion and seventh-seeded Venus Williams beat Russian teenager Alisa Kleybanova 6-3, 6-4, while two-time winner and No. 6 Serena Williams downed Bethanie Mattek – the only other American left in the men's or women's draw – 6-3, 6-3.
"It wasn't what I would have liked to see," Serena Williams said of the Court 2 scheduling. "Initially, I thought, 'Is this the right schedule?' I thought maybe there was a mistake. But I can't dwell on that. I just have to focus on doing the best that I can whether I'm on Court 2 or Court 20."
Later, the sisters made it 3-0 on Court 2 for the day, beating Anabel Medina Garriques and Virginia Ruano Pascal 6-1, 6-4 to reach the quarters of the women's doubles.
Between them, four-time champion Venus and two-time winner Serena have won six of the last eight women's singles titles at Wimbledon. They're in opposite halves of the draw and could meet in the final Saturday. The Williams sisters faced each other in the 2002 and '03 finals, with Serena winning both.
"Both of us have an opportunity to live our dream, so for us it's a plus," Venus Williams said.
In men's play, Federer swept Lleyton Hewitt – the last man to win the title before his run of five straight titles – 7-6 (7), 6-2, 6-4 on Centre Court to extend his winning streak on grass to 63 matches and 38 in a row at the All England Club. Federer, who served 21 aces, has now beaten his Australian rival in 12 consecutive matches.
Federer will next face the last player to beat him on grass and at Wimbledon – Croatian Mario Ancic, who won in the first round in 2002. Ancic came from two sets down Monday to beat Fernando Verdasco 3-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 13-11. The final set alone lasted 1 hour, 35 minutes.
"I completely underestimated him back in 2002," Federer said. "I was a little shellshocked and didn't know what happened to me. What it taught me was not to underestimate any opponent."
No. 2 Nadal, runner-up to Federer the last two years, overcame an injury scare in the second game of the match and beat Mikhail Youzhny 6-3, 6-3, 6-1.
Nadal slipped on the worn turf behind the baseline on Court 1 while stretching to hit a forehand, with his right leg bending awkwardly. After losing the point, he took a medical timeout, and a trainer wrapped his leg below the knee. The Spaniard lost the next point and the game, but showed no sign of trouble and dominated the rest of the way.
"I felt a little bit of pain," the four-time French Open champion said. "I was a little bit scared. I felt something crack a little behind (the knee). But I think it's fine."
Nadal's quarterfinal opponent will be Britain's Andy Murray, who came from two sets down to beat No. 8 Richard Gasquet 5-7, 3-6, 7-6 (3), 6-2, 6-4 in a Centre Court match that ended in near-darkness at 9:30 p.m.
After hitting a service winner on his second match point to reach his first Grand Slam quarterfinal, Murray flexed his biceps to the capacity crowd of 15,000.
"It was the best moment I've ever had on a tennis court," said Murray, bidding to become the first British man to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936. "It looked like I was down and out. The crowd got behind me when I really needed."
No. 10-seeded Marcos Baghdatis, a semifinalist in 2006 and quarterfinalist last year, squandered three match points in the fifth set. The Cypriot lost 5-7, 6-2, 3-6, 7-6 (4), 8-6 to Feliciano Lopez. The Spaniard, down 0-40 at 4-5, came up with big serves on all three points to avoid defeat.
"He just went for it with guts, and he took the game," Baghdatis said. "Good for him."
Also advancing among the men were former No. 1 Marat Safin, who beat No. 13 Stanislas Wawrinka in four sets; Rainer Schuettler, the oldest remaining player in the draw at age 32, who downed Janko Tipsarevic in four sets; and 145th-ranked Arnaud Clement, who beat 19-year-old Marin Cilic in straight sets to become the lowest-ranked player to reach the men's quarters here since No. 198 Alexander Popp in 2003.
Playing with her left knee heavily wrapped, Jankovic was never in serious contention against the 60th-ranked Tanasugarn. The 31-year-old Thai, playing in her 12th consecutive Wimbledon, also was treated for a lower back problem during changeovers in the second set.
After converting on match point to reach the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam for the first time, Tanasugarn covered her face with her hands and broke into tears.
"Wow, wow, wow," Tanasugarn said. "Being in the fourth round so many years, making it to the quarterfinals is really a good feeling."
Jankovic, who complained about being scheduled out on Court 18, said she played with a tear in her knee sustained during her third-round win Friday.
Venus Williams, who will face Tanasugarn in the quarters, was clearly not happy with the court scheduling.
"There's not too much I'm going to say about that in the press," she said.
Her father, Richard Williams, didn't hold back.
"Venus is a four-time champion, defending champion," he said. "They're not putting Roger Federer out there (on Court 2). If they're not putting Roger Federer out there, they shouldn't put Venus out there. I think it's ridiculous."
All England Club spokesman Johnny Perkins said the tournament referee had to schedule 16 matches on the same day, and noted that Courts 2 and 18 are show courts for top players.
Also advancing was Chinese wild card Zheng Jie, who followed her upset of Ivanovic last week to beat 19-year-old Hungarian Agnes Szavay 6-3, 6-4. Other women's winners were Nicole Vaidisova, who downed No. 8 Anna Chakvetadze 4-6, 7-6 (0), 6-3; and Nadia Petrova, a 6-1, 6-4 victor over Alla Kudryavtseva, who had beaten Sharapova in the second round
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WTA Womens Tennis Association ana ivonovic serena williams venus williams sania mirza anna kournikova alize cornet?australian open wta rankins player profiles 208 tournaments
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