Inside look at the semis – Wimbledon

By maxime68 on Friday, July 3, 2009 - 13:22

Both semi finals were scheduled back to back and the seats of the Centre Court were packed when the first match started.

First was Elena Dementieva vs. Serena Williams with S.Williams being the favorite. We were in for a nice a surprise and about to watch the best match of the tournament so far.

Dementieva had improved her serve overnight and managed to find a special stroke when she had to go into second serve that left S.Williams without reply. Serena, on the other hand, made more errors than in the quarter finals, all in all 5 double faults vs. 0 and 28 unforced errors to 7. The first set was well-balanced and thus ended in a tie-break. Both players added a few notches to their volume, yet I still didn’t find it extremely disturbing.

(photo EPA/S.Suki)

The first set went to Dementieva. Serena started strongly in the second set, leading with 2:0. Dementieva managed a re-break and quite soon Serena had to serve against a match ball. Dementieva came very close to taking this set and match home. She made one or two mistakes; Serena answered with one or two strokes of genius and won this set instead.

(photo Reuters/T.Melville)

My first note for this third set reads like this “nicely formed six pack below a soaked through jersey”. This was just another confirmation that the commentators were right by calling Dementieva the best athlete of the remaining four.

The third set was a thriller; if this had been the second set we would have seen another tie-break. According to rules, the third set has to be played until one leads with a difference of two games.

After 2 hrs 48 mins Serena served for match ball and won, won the point, the set and the match.