Serena knows she's been in battle

TENNIS NEWS:HOW WRONG we all were. It's another Williams sisters Wimbledon final. Got that right. But it was far from the procession we thought it might be for Serena on yet another swelteringly humid day on Centre Court, writes JOHNNY WATTERSON

Elena Dementieva was groomed to be the cannon fodder for another explosive Williams strut to the final. The Russian player’s serve was seen to be as laughably flimsy as her mental strength. Although it was known all over the tennis world how well she moved, how toned she had become over the last 12 months with a change in her physical routine and what a big carving forehand she possessed, it was always going to be Williams. How wrong that was.

On grass and against a Williams the end result seems never to change and one of the two sisters has now been in the final for nine of the last 10 years. But Dementieva will leave this championship in the certain knowledge that in 6-7, 7-5, 8-6 defeat she rattled one of the best grass court players in history in a three-set war.

Emotionally charged, high tempo and swinging on net cords, Hawkeye challenges and miss-hits, Dementieva may privately groan at her gloriously missed opportunity of taking the match in the third set, but can look back on a dramatic rumble that this championship sorely needed and had not seen in many years, perhaps ever.

It is possible that tournaments can be remembered by just one raw brawl such as this, a tennis confrontation where hostilities were kept within the laws but were nakedly paraded throughout.

It was a face-to-face battle in which the players rose above all that has gone before and put their hearts at the feet of the 15,000 sweating fans on Centre Court. With no partisan value for the crowd, they nonetheless delighted in the player’s hunger and refusal to take their eye from the goal in what was the longest semi-final in the Open era at two hours and 50 minutes.

But for the first time in these two weeks, a player was able to live on court with the Williams force, go toe-to-toe on power and serve and demand her to play the best game she had.

Dementieva will have given others who groan about the sisters’ dominance here a sharp lesson on how to deal with a brand of game that had apparently moved so far ahead of the rest of the pack that the game itself was tumbling towards some sort of distress. Shed weight, get more muscle, train harder, learn how to move and hit hard the way they do.

“I think we were both playing well today,” said Dementieva. “The only regret I have is that I should have taken a little more risk on match point. That was the best match we ever played against each other.”

Williams opened ominously with an ace on her first delivery but her serve was broken in that first game and from there on it was never straightforward. She immediately replied by taking Dementieva’s serve in the second game as the set raced to a tiebreak. Even then it hung in the balance, the Russian finally taking it 7-6 as Williams rushed in to murder a second Dementieva serve but hit it wide, her jaw dropping in disbelief.

“I’ve never seen her serve so well in my life,” said Williams. “She definitely played her personal best tennis today. I think her second serves were in the upper nineties, some times hundreds. You know to keep that up consistently for three sets is not easy.”

The second set continued where the first ended, both players smacked up on adrenaline and locked in an uncompromising battle of power and nerve with Dementieva surrendering her serve in the first game.

Neither player stood back, neither looked for the safety button. A wide Dementieva forehand took Williams serve in the sixth game for parity before the American retrieved it again in the 11th, Dementieva hitting the net cord and the ball deflecting just over the tramline. She challenged the call but, like most of her challenges yesterday, it was inches out.

It was a blow to the 27-year-old but Dementieva’s rehabilitation from flaky professional to fully fledged challenger seemed complete. The previously iffy serve was strong and assured forcing Williams to routinely play outside of her comfort zone.

“I definitely had to dig deep because I was playing a player who didn’t give me an inch, didn’t make too many errors, was playing 100 per cent,” said Williams.

The Williams forehand wasn’t working, or, as Serena put it “my forehand didn’t show up today. I think he went to Hawaii”. That partly helped Dementieva break serve for 3-1 in the third set and dare to dream as Williams threw her racquet across the court in utter frustration. Then at 6-5 Dementieva caught a fleeting glimpse of the final as she earned her one and only match point.

But this script has been written before and when the unflinching Williams prevailed and saved the match few were shocked. Deflated Dementieva handed over her service game in the 13th game and Williams just gobbled her up. “I felt like I was pretty much there the whole match, mentally,” said Williams. “I just wanted to keep going. I wanted to win really bad.”

Perhaps that’s where the secret lies, wanting to win so bad. Serena meets her big sister Venus now in a celebration of the family fortunes on Centre Court. They have played each other 20 times. The head-to-head-record stands at 10-10. As always, on court or off, the sisters are inseparable.