The four women who will be competing at this year’s semifinals in Wimbledon are all set. Out of the remaining four players, only one has won the Wimbledon Championships before. That player is Angelique Kerber, who defeated Serena Williams in the 2018 final in straight sets. Ashleigh Barty has won the French Open but will look to add another Grand Slam trophy to her collection. The other two players, Karolina Pliskova and Aryna Sabalenka, are looking to make history this Thursday in their first Wimbledon semifinal. Here are the four finalists who will battle it out for a ticket to the Wimbledon final.
Ashleigh Barty
The 25-year-old Australian is currently the World No.1, and she is playing some phenomenal tennis. She did not play any tune up event to prepare for Wimbledon as she was rehabilitating from a hip injury that caused her to retire from the French Open last month. Fast forward a few weeks and she is looking as great as before.
Plenty of people were doubting how she will perform since she had not played a tune up event leading to Wimbledon. Well, she certainly answered those questions and is the heavy favorite to win it all this year. She has lost only one set in this tournament, all the way back in the first round. She lost a set to Carla Suarez Navarro in a second set tiebreak.
After that she has not dropped a set and served 38 aces thus far. She will remain as the females World No.1 as she made it to the semifinals. Her top spot was looking to be in danger if she hadn’t made it to the semifinals and if Aryna Sabalenka would have won the Wimbledon championship. Next Monday Barty will be at the top for the 84th week. This will be her third semifinal match at a major as she reached the French and Australian Open semis before.
She will meet Angelique Kerber in her semifinal match. She has beaten the German twice before. Their next encounter will be the first time they meet at a Major. Last time they met was in 2018 at Wuhan in the Round of 16, which Barty won in straight sets. This time around the stakes are much higher as the winner will head to the Wimbledon final.
Angelique Kerber
The former 2018 Wimbledon champion is the 25th seed in this tournament. She is playing like her old self and is on a 10-match winning streak. She won a tune up event in her home country of Germany, the Bad Homburg Open, in which she rediscovered her incredible form. It has proven that winning that tournament has helped her elevate her game and confidence.
Before the grass season started this year, she had only won nine matches and had not beaten a top 20 player in two years. In this major she has dropped two sets and those matches were against Sara Sorribes Tormo and Aliaksandra Sasnovich. Kerber is playing lights out tennis and is playing like a true champion.
She has experience being in this position as she won this tournament back in 2018. Clearly, she enjoys playing on grass as she has won 80 matches on grass in her whole career. Only Venus and Serena Williams have more grass court wins than her. Among active players only the Williams sisters have more Wimbledon semifinal appearances than Kerber.
With this in mind, Angie is a force to be reckon coming into this match and will push the World No.1 to the edge. Both players are great on grass courts, and we will see if the German can upset the top seed.
Karolína Plíšková
The Czech player is enjoying her time in Wimbledon. She has yet to drop a set and only one player has taken five games from her in a set. That player was Tamara Zidanšek, who is the only one that has been able to trouble her in this tournament. That was in the first round and since then she has not lost more than three games in a set.
On the first Monday of Wimbledon her 230 weeks of being in the top 10 came to an end. She saw her ranking drop to No.13. Coming into this tournament she had not gone deep in the two tune up tournaments she played in to prepare for Wimbledon. However, she has quickly turned things around and she is playing freely. She has come under the radar and that has benefited Plíšková.
The Czech is in her fourth Grand Slam semifinal and is the 28th player to reach the semifinals of all four Grand Slams. Her opponent in the semifinals is Aryna Sabalenka, a heavy hitter in which she is yet to defeat. She has lost both of their previous meetings and will try to change that this Thursday. They played on grass once and all of their matches have gone into three sets. We will see if that trend continues and if Karolína can finally beat Sabalenka for the first time.
Aryna Sabalenka
Sabalenka has finally advanced further than the fourth round of a Grand Slam. The youngest of the semifinalists is in unchartered territory. Nonetheless, this is what everyone was waiting for her to accomplish as everyone knows she has the game to go far in a Grand Slam. The question was if she was mentally ready to achieve such a big goal.
Indeed, she has conquered that and is now on her way to the final. She will play Karolína Plíšková in which she is yet to lose to. Although, those two previous encounters against the Czech were back in 2018. Both players have grown since then and have different coaches and team members.
Sabalenka can now play a bit more freely without having to remind herself that she hadn’t crossed the fourth round in a major yet. Now, she can focus on her game and play for a chance to be in her first Grand Slam final.
No Unseeded Players In The Semifinals
The remaining four players are all ranked players and no huge surprises of reaching the finals. Barty, despite not playing a tune up event leading to Wimbledon, was and is a heavy favorite to reach the final. Unlike the French Open this year, there is no unseeded player or a surprise player who reached the final.
Kerber is a former Wimbledon champion, Plíšková has several grass court titles in the WTA circuit, and Sabalenka is a great player who needed to cross that barrier of advancing further than the fourth round in a Grand Slam. No doubt these four players deserve to be in the semifinals as they have been the most consistent throughout the tournament.
Main Photo from Getty.
