The 50th-ranked Vesnina is an unheralded doubles specialist making her first appearance in a Grand Slam semifinal, and she has lost all four of her previous meetings with Serena without winning a set. Sound familiar? That description could have been used, verbatim, to describe Roberta Vinci, Serena’s opponent in last year’s U.S. Open semifinal—and we all know what happened there. Can Vesnina pull a Vinci? It’s a little like asking if lightning can strike twice: technically yes, but just because it happened once doesn’t mean there’s any greater chance of it happening again. For one, Vinci is a better singles player than the 29-year-old Vesnina. For another, the Italian has a unique slice-and-dice style of play, one that Serena hadn’t seen at the Open last year. That won’t be true of the hard-hitting Vesnina. In her last two matches, Serena has been in lockdown mode, but she also looked that way going into the final of the Australian Open. She can’t falter at the finish line three straight times, can she?
Winner: S. Williams
The heart, or at least the American heart, says Venus. She’s 36, she hasn’t been this far at Wimbledon since 2009 and an all-Williams final would be a poetic last hurrah for the two sisters. The head, on balance, says Kerber. She’s eight years younger, has won a major already this year, hasn’t dropped a set at Wimbledon and has a 3-2 record against Venus. She won their only meeting on grass, on these courts, at the 2012 Olympics. Judging by their form this fortnight, I think Kerber will win unless Venus plays the way she did in the final games against Yaroslava Shvedova in the quarters. In her early matches, Venus threaded the needle and relied on her younger opponents’ inexperience. But she closed her quarterfinal with a powerful series of serves and ground strokes. The head says Kerber, but Venus may have an answer: “I’ve come too far to stop now.”
Winner: V. Williams