Women’s quarterfinals underway at Wimbledon

The 30-year-old Czech eventually converted a match point at the eighth time of asking to set up a last-eight clash with French mystery package Lucas Pouille.

They had left the contest level when the umpire called time, much to the frustration of 10th seed Berdych, who has suffered a string of delays at the tournament and tried to get the match moved to Centre Court to be finished under the floodlit roof. Venus beat Serena in the 2000 semifinals en route to her first title and again in the 2008 final.

LONDON, July 6 Czech 10th seed Tomas Berdych cruised into his second Wimbledon semi-final on Wednesday, grinding into gear after a slow start to end Frenchman’s Lucas Pouille’s unexpected love-affair with the All England turf in straight sets.

Top-ranked Serena will face No. 21-seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Centre Court in one of the day’s four women’s quarterfinals.

Serena will play Elena Vesnina, a 50th-ranked Russian who defeated Dominika Cibulkova 6-2, 6-2, becoming the first unseeded women’s semifinalist at Wimbledon since 2010. The victor will play either No. 19 Dominika Cibulkova or Elena Vesnina, who faced off on No. 1 Court.

“It would be great”, she said.

A competitive start saw both men pull winners out of the bag with Pouille showing no nerves on his Grand Slam quarter-final debut. Shvedova then went up 5-2 in the tiebreaker, but stalled as Williams rallied to take command. The first set, I felt like I had so many opportunities, but then she would play so well.

“What a day it was against an opponent who was just on fire”, Williams said.

Kerber has a 3-2 career edge against Venus, but they haven’t faced each other since 2014. “Clearly, she’s had a great year, another great result in the Slam”.

Berdych will face the victor of today’s last men’s semi-final, between Andy Murray and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.