Serena at ease as she looks to match Graf’s record of 22 grand slams

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  • Serena Williams.

    For the third time, Serena Williams is in a grand slam final looking to match Steffi Graf’s Open Era record of 22 majors, and the American admittedly feels “more relaxed” than she’s been in a while.

    Since losing her shot at the calendar-year Grand Slam by falling to Roberta Vinci in the US Open semi-finals last year, Serena has made the Australian and French Open finals but surprisingly walked away as the match loser on both occasions.

    She has a rematch with Angelique Kerber on Saturday in the Wimbledon final, in a repeat of their title clash in Melbourne six months ago.

    While making a third consecutive grand slam final can be celebrated as a massive achieved by virtually anyone in the sport, for Serena, anything less than the trophy is often perceived as an underachievement.

    She seems confident about her chances Saturday though.

    “I feel a little different. I just feel more relaxed and more at peace than I may have been in the past,” said Serena ahead of the final.

    “I think for anyone else in this whole planet, it would be a wonderful accomplishment. For me, it’s about obviously holding the trophy and winning, which would make it a better accomplishment for me. For me, it’s not enough. But I think that’s what makes me different. That’s what makes me Serena.”

    Serena can walk away with two trophies, not just won.

    She is also in the doubles final, alongside her sister Venus, as they target a 14th grand slam title together as a team and a fourth Wimbledon doubles crown.

    Playing singles and doubles means Serena has spent a total of 15 hours and 30 minutes on court competing so far, while Kerber has spent just seven hours and 28 minutes in comparison.

    It does not seem to be a worrying factor for Team Serena though and her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, is just thrilled to see Serena “back to herself”.

    The Frenchman is adamant that the “real Serena” would beat Kerber and is backing his charge to capture the title Saturday.

    “I feel she’s ready now. She’s ready, she’s back to herself. Maybe she looks relaxed but it’s more that she’s more herself,” said Mouratoglou.

    And what exactly is “herself”?

    He responded: “She behaved like a top player, not like the No1 in the world in the last months.

    “Usually she always behaved like the No1 on the court and out of the court. So now she’s back to No1. Not talking about results, I’m talking about attitude, I’m talking about ability to handle the matches, ability to change the matches around when she’s in trouble, all those things that she’s so good at.

    “If she’s herself, I know the result. The real challenge is that. We know what she needs to do to win this one.”

    Serena has been avoiding all talk of Graf’s record and Mouratoglou says it hasn’t been a topic of discussion for a while.

    “It’s a subject but we’re far from being obsessed about it and we didn’t talk about it for a while now. That’s not the point at the moment,” he said.

    “Everything in life you build step by step and I think the next step is to find herself back, and everything else is a reward. So don’t think about the reward, think about what you have to do and maybe you get what you want after that.”

    That defeat to Kerber in the Australian Final is something Serena has not wiped from her memory and the defending Wimbledon champion believes it was a valuable learning experience for her.

    “I made a lot of errors. She made little to no unforced errors. It was still a three‑set match.  I felt like I could have played better,” is what Serena remembers of that Melbourne final.

    “I felt like she played great. She came out swinging, ready to win. She was fearless. That’s something I learned. When I go into a final, I, too, need to be fearless like she was. It was inspiring afterwards to realise there’s a lot of things that I need to improve on.”

    Mouratoglou is not putting too much weight on that match going into the next one.

    “I’m not going to think about this match, it was another match and it was another Serena,” he said. “I wanna see Kerber against the real Serena. I don’t know, we’ll see the result but maybe we’ll see that, I’m happy about it, that’s the one I wanna play.”

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