Maria Sharapova, saddled with history and a ball-toss that rebelled her every impulse, suffered for an hour and 19 minutes in the glare and heat of Centre Court before watching Serena Williams ease past her for the 17th time in a row and into the final of the 2015 Wimbledon.
Whatever the pretty words they spout – and they do, on cue – there is always spice when they meet, just not a lot of equality.
Every time Williams looks across the net and sees Sharapova staring back she surely thinks to herself: “You’re the queen off the court. This is my place – and it always will be.” The American didn’t face a single break point.
It is the rivalry that isn’t, a serial nightmare for the Russian, an opportunity for Williams to show who is, by a distance, the best player in women’s tennis since Steffi Graf and, in all likelihood, crowned the very best before she retires.
She should also be the owner of 21 slam titles by late Saturday afternoon – one behind the German – if, as universally expected, she dismantles the Spaniard Garbiñe Muguruzu to win her sixth Wimbledon final, having lifted the trophy in 2002, 2003, 2009, 2010 and 2012.
Sharapova, the highest-earning female athlete in the world, loses to Williams whether she plays well or not, and she was rarely more than a bystander as the world No 1 took her apart in front of a Centre Court audience as embarrassed as they were unsurprised.
Williams has won $6,175,648 in prizemoney this year, nearly three times as much as Sharapova. Over her career she was won $69,676,428 – nearly twice as much as Sharapova. Yet each time they meet it is an event. There is not a weirder duality in sport.
“I got a little nervous out there,” Williams said courtside, unconvincingly. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been this far at Wimbledon. She played really well, but when she stepped up her game I stepped up mine as well. You never want to lose, and even if that is a loss, at least she tried.”
It was hardly a contest for more than a few exchanges as Williams won 6-1, 6-4. She had far tougher workouts against Heather Watson in a three-set thriller in the third round, then had another epic fight with Victoria Azarenka – perhaps the best contest of the whole tournament – to reach these semi-finals.
Now she will have in her sights the talented but largely untested 20th seed Muguruza, who won a close, tense match against Radwanska. Muguruza will do well indeed to stay with Williams in her current form.
The winner said of her upcoming opponent: “It’s great for Garbiñe. She actually beat me before. She is a really good player. It’s not going to be an easy match.” It is. Believe it.
In what was supposed to be the showpiece semi-final and the glamour collision of the sport, she toyed with the Russian yet again. It is often forgotten that Sharapova once beat Williams twice in the same year – but that year was 2004, when she was 17 and an unknown force of whirring serves and booming forehands.
She is still formidable – but never against Williams. In all of those tormented public beatings, she has won only three sets – in the semi-finals of the 2005 Australian Open, in a clay tournament in Charleston three years later and in Doha in 2013.
On Thursday she saved one of three set points but was stranded and helpless when Williams moved in on a mid-court chance to bury it in the unattended ad corner to stroll into a one-set lead after little more than half an hour.
In every facet of the game, the American was dominant. As Sharapova struggled to even get her ball-toss right, Williams banged down ace after ace, and 29 winners to nine.
Sharapova led on serve in the second set but it was an illusion. Once Williams found her rhythm, the hammering resumed. Facing break point in the fifth game, she double-faulted – her 43rd of the tournament – and the match was all but done. The hum that rattled around the stadium was one of barely contained pity. She was one serve away from repeating the misery in the seventh game, but held and pumped her fist defiantly.
She gained brief hope with a couple of points on the Williams serve, but, as loud as she shrieked, as fiercely as her eyes blazed, she could not sustain the charge. She tried, none the less, as she always does – all the way to the grim end.
Serving to stay in the championships, she battled to deuce, double-faulted for the sixth time, saved match point and held through two deuce points. A lot of players would dissolve in such circumstances. A lot of players aren’t Maria Sharapova.
But she could only swish in vain as Williams’s concluding ace, her 13th of the afternoon and 81st of the tournament, flew past her like a bullet.
Williams is in awesome shape. This was her 27th straight match win in a slam, just six shy of her record run between the 2002 French Open and the semi-finals there a year later. There is no stopping her.
(Guardian service)
