Can Zheng or Dementieva stop an all Williams Wimbledon final?
Venus Williams and little sister Serena have stormed into the women’s semifinals at Wimbledon. Both won convincingly in straight sets. It remains to be seen if Zheng Jie or Elena Dementieva can stop an all Williams Wimbledon final.
Zheng continued her dream run breaking records along the way. By defeating Nicole Vaidisova 6-2, 5-7, 6-1 the popular Chinese player becomes the first ever Chinese player into a singles grand slam semifinal and also the first ladies wildcard to go this far.
Zheng earlier in the tournament defeated the top seed Ana Ivanovic and has now made the most of that win by reaching the semis. Quite often after a lesser known player defeats one of the top seeds they lose in the next match. There has been no such problem for Zheng as her march continued.
Against Vaidisova, Zheng the doubles champion in 2006 was too solid from the back of the court. After losing the first set Vaidisova adjusted her game and tried to keep the ball in play for longer. This worked as Zheng made more errors and the Czech player levelled the match.
In the decider Vaidisova handed her Chinese opponent the match as she hit too many unforced errors. The final game was a good indication of why she lost. Vaidisova hit four unforced errors to give her opponent 3 match points. On the third match point Zheng saw Vaidisova hit the ball into the net to give her victory. Her win no doubt will give tennis a huge boost back home in China.
Zheng’s oppponent in the semi will be Serena Williams who easily accounted for Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland, 6-4, 6-0. This will be a classic David and Goliath confrontation. Zheng has shown she can mix it with the best so she cannot be ruled out in this match.
The defending champion Venus Williams also won in straight sets. After a closely contested first set against Thailands Tamarine Tanasugarn the four time champion grew in confidence and wrapped up the match 6-4, 6-3. Early in the second set she sent down four thunderous serves that were as good as aces as she did not have to play a single ground stroke to take the game. Venus will play Elena Dementieva in the other semi.
The number five seeded Russian overcame countrywoman Nadia Petrova and her nerves to move into her first Wimbledon semifinal. Dementieva looked to be cruising to a straight sets win. She had taken the first 6-1 and was cruising to a 5-1 lead in the second set. Then it all changed. Throw in some doubles faults from Dementieva and the match was turned around and we had a tie break. Once again the highest seed left in the tournament was looking likely to win as she held two match points. She didn’t and the match was level after Petrova took the breaker 8-6.
Now you had to wonder what would this do to Dementieva’s confidence. Was she going to crumble and hand the match to her Russian opponent? She was a bit shaky but in the end she kept it together long enough to take the third set 6-3. This made the final score 6-1, 7-6, 6-3.
The semis are going to be intriguing. Can Zheng pull off the fairytale win and go all the way to the final and not only reach the final but win it? Will nerves get the better of Dementieva and see her crash out against Venus?
Love to hear what you think…leave a comment then let your friends know by using the ShareThis link below.
Facebook comments:
