Wimbledon 2010:Sensational Serena Williams is a four time winner
Serena Williams
Serena Williams etched her family’s name on the Venus Rosewater Dish for the ninth time in 11 years after her stunning victory over surprise Wimbledon finalist Vera Zvonareva.
The 28-year-old is now only one behind sister Venus after clinching her fourth title at the All England Club in a performance of supreme power and athleticism lasting one hour and three minutes.
American Williams barely broke into a sweat as she took just 67 minutes to beat Zvonareva in a comprehensive 6-3 6-2 victory at the ladies’ singles finals on Saturday.
Zvonareva, playing in her first grand slam final, began well but Williams simply got better and better and reeled off nine of the last 11 games for a 13th major singles crown.
Williams’ victory took her ahead of Billie Jean King to sixth on the all-time list, and she was thrilled to come out a winner again in SW19.
This one’s very special,’ she told the Centre Court crowd. ‘It’s amazing to be among such great people. I’m so happy and I feel so blessed. My dream was able to come true.’
The defending champion had looked the clear favourite to retain her crown all fortnight, powering through the draw without dropping a set.
Her serve has been one of the key reasons for that, and she admitted afterwards: ‘I’ve honestly never served like this. I just feel like at Wimbledon when I come on to this grass and this court I start serving well and I want to keep it up.’
Source Mail.
*Mark Hodgkinson of Telegraph reports :
Not long after the BBC’s live broadcast of the women’s final, they replayed some of the match, and watching the second showing felt very much like sitting through it the first time: you knew who the champion was.
This was the most predictable of Wimbledon finals.
The best period of the match for Vera Zvonareva was in the warm-up, as it was only then, during the exchange of three-quarter-strength forehands, that she was able to stay with Serena Williams on Centre Court. Once the umpire had called “play”, and Williams was clouting the ball through the grass, this was not a real contest, the Californian winning 6-3, 6-2 in just over an hour.
On walking into the stadium, Williams, had flung her bouquet of flowers on to the ground, and she dealt with the Russian in much the same way to retain the Venus Rosewater Dish.
It was not her fault that her power and her class took all the tension out of the air in south-west London, as she gave yet another brilliant serving performance.
Williams would suggest that 13 was her lucky number. She could have spent the morning walking under ladders, smashing mirrors and stepping on the tails of black cats, and she still would have annihilated Zvonareva to win her fourth Wimbledon title and her 13th grand slam trophy.
Williams, who missed a large chunk of this season with a knee injury, has won only two titles this year. It just so happens that both those titles have been grand slam trophies, with victories at January’s Australian Open and now these grass-court Championships.
On the leader board of serial women’s slam champions, Williams moved one above the watching Billie Jean King, and during the prize-giving ceremonies she looked over to the Royal Box and called out: “Hey, Billie, I’ve got you.”
She meant that in a friendly way. The pair are friends, and King has been telling the 28 year-old for a while that she ought to pass her on that list. Now, only five women have more than Serena.
Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert have 18 each, Helen Wills Moody has 19, Steffi Graf won 22 and Margaret Court accumulated 24 slams.
Realistically, Williams can perhaps catch Navratilova, Evert and Moody, but not the other two. Still, Serena is not even the most successful grass-court player in her family, as her older sister is still one ahead of her with five replica dishes.
Since the summer of 2000, one family from California has accumulated nine Wimbledon titles. Only Russia’s Maria Sharapova, the champion in 2004, and Amelie Mauresmo, the winner in 2006, have broken that run. Indeed, four times, including the two previous summers, we have had all-Williams finals.
At the start of the tournament, many would have imagined that Serena would go on to win Wimbledon; they would have been surprised that she didn’t do so by beating her sister. It was Tsvetana Pironkova, of Bulgaria, who ended any chance of an all-Williams final when she defeated Venus in the quarter-finals for the loss of five games.
Last summer, when Serena beat Venus in straight sets, it did not provide great entertainment. But at least there was some doubt as to which one of the sisters was going end up as the Wimbledon champion.
This result was never in doubt. Only once before has a Williams sister lost to someone outside the family in a Wimbledon final, which was when Sharapova defeated Serena in 2004. It was not about to happen for a second time, not with Williams hitting her serve with such pace.
For whatever reason, Serena serves better on Wimbledon’s Centre Court than in any other stadium in the world, and she finished this tournament with 89 aces from her seven appearances. Probably the only nervous moment for her during the fortnight was when the Queen popped by for lunch on the first Thursday and she was anxious not to mess up her curtsy.
Zvonareva, on her first appearance in a Wimbledon final, played about as well as could have been expected of her in the opening set. Williams broke Zvonareva’s serve for 5-3 when she whacked a forehand past her, and then dropped on to one knee on the grass to perform a fist-pump. Her cry of “C’mon” would have carried all the way up the hill, past St Mary’s Church and into Wimbledon Village.
Williams served out the first set, and went on to break her opponent a couple of times in the second. She finished the match with a smash and then tossed
her racket into the air. Winning Wimbledon never gets boring for Williams, no matter how many times she has done it before, and no matter how easily she does it.
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