Serena Williams played her first match at Wimbledon looking every bit like a player who was coming off an 11-month break from the sport. She was tentative when hitting her groundstrokes. Her serve, usually executed in a fluid, textbook fashion, looked like it had a hitch in it. She got to balls late with her racquet dragging behind her, causing a number of unforced errors (the real kind). The four-time Wimbledon champion went three sets in each match, putting away opponents in the decider but sending notice to the rest of the draw that her comeback could be a slow process and that, for the time being, she was beatable.
After a thorough beat down of No. 26 seed Maria Kirilenko on Saturday, a match in which Serena looked fit and fresh, there's a new notice out to the 16 remaining players in the women's field: the title goes through Serena.
What other conclusion can you draw? It took exactly four matches (two at Eastbourne, two at Wimbledon) for Serena to get back into form. The plodding way she got to balls earlier in the week? Gone. The nervousness she had about being back on court? Disappeared. Run a side-by-side of the Serena from Saturday against the Serena from last year, arguably her most dominant run ever at Wimbledon, and it'd be hard to pick out the differences. Whatever apprehension she had on Tuesday that caused her to weep in joy after her opening-round match was replaced with that celebrated killer instinct.
Venus Williams didn't have quite as bumpy a road to the round of 16 but it wasn't without obstacle. She won her first-round match with ease before having to go to 8-6 in the third set to defeat the 40-year-old wonder, Kimiko Date-Krumm. In the third round, Venus was back to her dominating ways.
Consider the sisters' stats through the first three rounds and look at the improvement, particularly from Serena:
On Monday, Venus faces Tsvetana Pironkova, the Bulgarian who sent her home from the All England Club last year. Serena gets French Open finalist Marion Bartoli. Both will be favored, a loss by either wouldn't be unexpected. If they were to keep winning, and recent results make it more likely than not, it could lead to a meeting between the sisters in next Saturday's final.
Maybe that's a long shot, but no more than the fact that both sisters have made the second week of Wimbledon 2011 in such convincing fashion.
Leila Arcieri Kate Mara Izabella Scorupco Carla Campbell Penélope Cruz
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