CERTAIN EX-CHAMPIONS still cast huge shadows over Wimbledon long after they have retired. Steffi Graf celebrated her 42nd birthday earlier this month and won the last of her seven ladies’ singles titles 15 years ago, but yesterday her name was on everybody’s lips.
Even if Sabine Lisicki does become the first female wild card to triumph at the All England Club, the pecking order of German tennis heroines will stay resolutely unchanged.
Lisicki may be talented, fit and an increasingly strong contender at these Championships but her biggest challenge of the fortnight will be to keep smiling whenever the inevitable G-word crops up at her press conferences. When the 21-year-old revealed she had recently been round for dinner to Steffi and Andre Agassi’s place in Las Vegas, you could almost hear the collective purring of the assembled press corps.
German tennis has been waiting an achingly long time for a girl like Sabine; the fact she is Florida-based and speaks with an American twang is a mere bagatelle. Because Ms Lisicki, judging by her 6-4, 6-7, 6-1 quarter-final dismissal of a crestfallen Marion Bartoli, has all the attributes of a potential wunderkind, particularly on grass.
Already this fortnight she has ousted the French Open champion, Li Na, and her serve is the deadliest female weapon out there.
With thunder and lightning flashing and crashing outside, it all made for a vaguely Wagnerian experience beneath the closed roof of Centre Court. Dark, heavy and claustrophobic, it could scarcely have been more different from the previous day when Bartoli had blazed her way into the last eight beneath clear blue skies.
From the outset, when she lost the first six points of the match, the ninth seed was on the back foot, straining simply to stay in touch, vainly chasing the artful drop shots which followed Lisicki’s own-brand thunderbolts.
Up in the Royal Box, a pitching wedge from the action, sat Rory McIlroy. Golf’s latest Major-winning talent would have appreciated the precision of some of Lisicki’s hitting and noted, too, the visible signs of weariness which ultimately proved the hyperactive Bartoli’s undoing. Both players have medically-qualified fathers but the French woman was swift to supply her own self-diagnosis.
“My mind was trying extremely hard but my body couldn’t do anything any more,” she sighed afterwards. “I was so exhausted I could barely walk from one side to the other. When I slow down it’s not a good sign. All of a sudden my body just shut down.”
According to her mentor Nick Bollettieri, Lisicki is far from laid-back herself – “It’s practice, practice, practice” – but she is increasingly playing smart too. While no one is ever likely to mistake her for a graceful Evonne Goolagong impersonator, she moves like a genuine athlete and has the necessary stamina to go with it.
As she freely admits, there is no sense of expectation on her shoulders, her ranking having dropped more than 150 places after she missed six months of the 2010 season with an ankle injury which was initially misdiagnosed.
“I’ve absolutely nothing to lose,” she said, looking optimistically ahead to her semi-final against the more experienced Maria Sharapova. “I’m here as a wild card and I’m in the semi-finals.”
She also considers herself a superior player –“I’m more experienced and calmer” – to the teenager who reached the last eight at Wimbledon two years ago.
Sharapova, the last giant left in the draw, powered into the semi-finals after being head and shoulders above diminutive Slovak Dominika Cibulkova in a 6-1 6-1 demolition.
Having not dropped a set all tournament, the tall Russian looks hot favourite to seal her fourth grand slam.
Lisicki was yesterday joined in the semi-finals by another talented 21-year-old, Petra Kvitova. The Czech eighth seed hit a staggering 54 winners to the Bulgarian Tsvetana Pironkova’s 10 in defeating her 6-3, 6-7, 6-2.
Kvitova will play the winner of last night’s match between Tamira Paszek and Victoria Azarenka.
Guardian Service
