Wimbledon: Venus Williams winning the title would be one of biggest sports stories ever, says Mats Wilander

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  • Ageless and unstoppable: Venus Williams.

    Mats Wilander believes Venus Williams winning Wimbledon would be “one of the biggest sports stories ever”, if not the biggest, the Swedish legend said ahead of Thursday’s semi-finals.

    At 37, Williams’ age-defying form continues to boggle the mind as the American is set to contest her third Grand Slam semi-final in her last five majors. If she beats Johanna Konta on Thursday, she will become the oldest Wimbledon finalist since Martina Navratilova in 1994. She’s also bidding to become the oldest Grand Slam champion in the Open Era, besting her sister Serena’s mark of 35 at the 2017 Australian Open.

    Williams, who lives with the autoimmune disease Sjogren’s syndrome, was also in the semis at the All England Club last year, but what makes her run this fortnight all the more remarkable is what she had to go through in the build-up to the tournament.

    On June 9, the seven-time major champion was involved in a car accident in Florida that led to the death of Jerome Barson, a 79-year-old, who passed away two weeks later from injuries sustained in the crash.

    Williams broke into tears during her first press conference at Wimbledon when she was asked about the accident and said she was devastated. Since then, the police have found Williams to have “lawfully” entered the intersection seconds before the crash.

    At such a difficult time for her, the No10 seed has somehow managed to reach the Wimbledon semi-finals, and is now two wins away from winning a first Slam since 2008.

    “If she wins at 37 after what she’s been through, I mean not only the last few weeks, but with her disease, and then staying afloat while Serena (her sister) has been cleaning up over the last five or six years, that would be an incredible – literally one of the biggest sports stories you could ever experience, if not the biggest. It’s massive,” seven-time Grand Slam champion Wilander told Sport360.

    “Konta is most probably at the moment the better player but Venus has the confidence of playing at Wimbledon. It fits her game perfectly.

    “It seems that her serve used to be a weapon on all different surfaces but it’s not anymore. It was in Australia, but the courts were really fast. And it seems that here she’s somehow serving better, and would say the reason is that the second serve is more effective here, and her slice serve, the first serve, is more effective here.

    “So it looks like she’s calmer, she doesn’t go for too much, but she still gets free points. And then, she has this ability to move on grass, which is not easy when you’re as tall as she is and the court is as slippery as it is, but that has to do with confidence. She can easily win it (Wimbledon), of course.”

    Williams can move back into the top five in the rankings for the first time since January 2011 if she wins the title. She has beaten a slew of young stars en route to the semis, two of which weren’t even born yet when she made her Wimbledon debut in 1997.

    “At some point it was expected that Venus wasn’t going to be top-50 and we at some point nearly thought ‘well why is she out there still doing this if she’s not… how can she do it if she doesn’t know how she’s going to feel?’ So for her to be able to manage all that, and really what’s happened to her in the last month with the accident is… to overcome all that and win Wimbledon, it’s nearly like the stars are aligning for her,” added Wilander.

    The winner of the contest between Williams and Konta will face Garbine Muguruza in the final.

    Muguruza, who crushed Magdalena Rybarikova in the semis on Thursday, has found her way back to top form after a 12-month struggle since she won the French Open last year.

    The Spaniard, who was runner-up at Wimbledon in 2015, dropped out of the top 10 after inconsistent form, but her strong run this fortnight means she can return to the top five if she wins the title.

    After losing in the French Open fourth round last month to Kristina Mladenovic, Muguruza said she was actually happy that the pressure hanging over her during the time she was reigning Roland Garros champion is finally over.

    Her strong form at Wimbledon suggests she is liberated from everything that was mentally holding her back.

    “Of course,” Wilander agreed. “When you’re not chasing a certain dream, which for her would have been winning a Grand Slam I would think. And you win it, you have to reassess your goals. It has to be heartfelt, it’s not a logical decision, it’s a feeling you.

    “And you see that with Andy Murray, and you see that with Novak Djokovic and you see that with Angelique Kerber. They just haven’t found the goal they are chasing next. And the next goal needs to be back to winning matches against the people across the net.

    “I think Garbine Muguruza, that’s what she was good at when she was at her best. She took every match as the last match of the tournament and played it as the biggest match of her career. And she did that in the early rounds, and she did it at Wimbledon when she got to the final, and she did at the French.

    “I think she’s found it again, and she obviously likes grass. In many ways I would say that Garbine Muguruza is the favourite to win the title.”

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