WIMBLEDON 2008: Women's Semifinals Preview

by Mad Professah

The 2008 Wimbledon Women's semifinals are now set. Mad Professah correctly predicted 2 of 4 of the women's quarterfinal match results.

Jie Zheng CHN vs. Serena Williams USA (6). For the first time ever, a Chinese woman has made it to a Grand Slam final. Pam Shriver thinks that in 5-10 years there will be as many Chinese players in the draw as there are curently Russians. I'll believe it when I see it. However, Zheng clearly has the belief that she can beat many players on grass but she has not faced someone with Serena's consistent power on this surface. I'm not sure what is going on with the Wimbledon website's match statistics, (why did they stop recording winner totals?) but they are claiming that Serena had 9 unforced errors against Bethanie Mattek in the 4th round and a scary 6 unforced errors against Aggie Radwanska in the quarters. If a Williams sister is in positive territory in the winners to errors differential it's difficult to see how she loses to anyone! Serena beat Zheng in straight sets at Wimbledon in 2004, first round. I doubt that playing on grass in the biggest match of her life will turn things in the Chinese player's favor. PREDICTION: Williams in 2 sets.

Elena Dementieva RUS (5) vs. Venus Williams USA (7). The Russian with the shaky serve and the outstanding ground strokes will be playing the American with the outstading serve and the (sometimes) shaky ground strokes. But the American is Venus Williams, who has never lost in the semifinal round at Wimbledon and is the current defending champion.

Even if Dementieva were to miraculously start serving as well as her quarterfinal opponent Nadia Petrova, she would still have a less than 10 per cent chance of beating Venus. Dementieva led 6-1,5-1 in her quarterfinal and yet somehow took another hour to (finally) get through that match against an even more mentally fragile (and far less fit) Russian opponent. Venus leads the head-to-head with Dementieva 5-2 and the last time the Russian beat her was in a 3rd set tiebreak more than 4 years ago on hard courts.

It will be interesting to see which Williams sister loses more games on the way to their 3rd Wimbledon final face-off. I suspect it will be Venus, but that will not change the result. PREDICTION: Williams in 2 sets.