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In the second Thursday semifinal at Wimbledon, Maria Sharapova was able to withstand 13 double faults and advance to the tournament final. In the first semi, Victoria Azarenka wasn’t so fortunate:

1. Azarenka had double faulted once all match prior to that one.

2. If there was ever a doubt about how affected Azarenka’s grunts are, listen to the similarities between the first serve and second serve shrieks. How could an easy, 81 mph serve elicit the same sort of effort squeal as a loaded up first serve?

3. To all television broadcasters, please stop cutting to the player’s box immediately after the match. The progression of cuts are the same following every victory: wide shot of point, close-up of player celebrating, close-up of people clapping/high-fiving in player’s box, lingering on the close-up of people clapping and high-fiving in the player’s box for a beat too long and then the handshake at the net. Look, we get it; the people in the player’s box are happy. Who cares? Unless there’s Brooklyn Decker or Sasha Vujacic there, people in the player’s box are completely interchangeable. So are their celebrations. Instead of cutting to them, how about keeping the camera on the winner or showing a shot of the player who just lost? That’s where the drama is. How long will the winner celebrate? Will he/she jog to the net? Is the loser going to be perturbed because of the wait? There are dozens of ways the end-of-match scenarios could play out. The player’s box is the same thing every time.

4. Given that Petra Kvitova is playing the erratic-serving Maria Sharapova on Saturday, there’s a legitimate chance she could be on the receiving end of match-winning double faults in both the semis and the finals.

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Radio listeners in the United Kingdom won’t be subjected to loud shrieking coming from their wireless sets during Wimbledon. The BBC recently unveiled a new program that allows listeners of live Wimbledon broadcasts to minimize the sound of on-court grunting.

[Photos: Maria Sharapova's Wimbledon run]

This week, BBC’s Radio 5 released NetMix, an online tool that gives viewers the option of decreasing the volume of the sound on the court relative to commentary provided by analysts. The site boasts that NetMix can change the level of “the crowd, base-line, grunting and ball,” as if people care about any but the third.

[Latest iPad app: Does the grunting bother you? Let your friends know what you think with IntoNow.]

The program came out days after the head of Wimbledon said he would like to see less grunting in the women’s game. Listeners on Thursday, for instance, could adjust the volume of on-court sound in matches featuring two of the loudest grunters on the WTA, Victoria Azarenka and Maria Sharapova.

Robert Brun, the head of audio and music technology for BBC radio told London’s Telegraph newspaper:

“Having known for a long time that broadcasters have a problem with balancing the ambient sounds of a sports match with the commentary, we felt we had to develop a tool which put the control back into the hands of the audience.

“The BBC receives lots of complaints from the public regarding sound balance — with many of them wanting the sound of the commentators turned up and the noise for a match turned down. Wimbledon was a clear choice to launch this product for as there are always so many comments about the amount of grunting from the players.”

This could be a “be careful what you wish for” situation. Turning down Azarenka’s interminable, 95-decibel grunts is a no-brainer. Having to listen to certain broadcasters may not be any better, though.

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The second women’s semifinal between Maria Sharapova and Sabine Lisicki is not being broadcast live anywhere in the United States. It will be aired by NBC on tape delay at 12 p.m. in all time zones. Here’s a list of programs (and the segments they were airing as I flipped channels) that are being broadcast live on American television while the Sharapova-Lisicki match is blacked out to viewers:

– NBC, The “Today” show — Hoda and Kathie Lee talk to Linda Hogan about her new book, “Wrestling the Hulk.”

– ESPN, “SportsCenter” — Nene opts out of his contract for the NBA season that’s not going to happen.

– ESPNews, “First Take” — The Mets! They aren’t as terrible as you remember!

– ESPNU, “The Herd” — I couldn’t bring myself to listen to Colin Cowherd, so use your imagination. Or don’t.

CNN, FOX News, MSNBC — William Gates retires from the Pentagon.

ESPN2, “Wimbledon 2011″ — It’s not live, of course, but the network is still on the air with Wimbledon coverage and is showing Wednesday’s match between Roger Federer and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Keep in mind, the previous 249 matches at Wimbledon have all been aired live in the United States. Now that we have a huge match that really counts, wait two hours, America!

[Tape-delaying Maria Sharapova's semifinal? Let your friends know what you think with IntoNow.]

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LONDON—The prancing, pitter-patter steps. The back to the opponent, like a madman relief pitcher getting ready to storm the mound. The string-gazing and the hair flip and the world-famous Shriek. The spastic “Come on!” and the ever-present clenched fist. And now the latest addition, the hyped-up fiancée who sits at attention and fist-pumps in her direction even when she’s not looking at him. Yes, certain things about Maria Sharapova can seem designed to bug the old-fashioned tennis fan.

I’ve been thinking about that over the last six weeks, as I’ve heard and read the many jokes and complaints about Sharapova’s shrieking, in both Paris and London. You might think she would temper the noise, or, after of all these years on tour, ease up on the between-points rituals. Or at least unclench the fist. But Sharapova, like the Queen, or the All England Club, or an experimental jazz band, alters nothing to suit popular opinion. Sitting in Centre Court today and listening to the crowd titter away at her louder efforts, I wondered what, at this point, fans would do if she didn’t do the Shriek? Would they be just a little disappointed? It’s not a pretty noise, and there should probably be a rule against it, but for now it’s part of the performance.

It’s that ability to stay in her bubble, to ignore, that makes Sharapova a special competitor. She can ignore the laughs and jibes and keep right on grunting. She can ignore a long period of injury, frustration and lack of success at this, her favorite tournament—it might not feel like it, but it’s been seven years since she won the title here at 17. And, as she showed again today in the semifinals against Sabine Lisicki, Sharapova is very good at ignoring the score. In a matter of minutes, she was down 0-3. Lisicki was the rookie out there—this was the German’s first Slam semi—but it was Sharapova who was battling her nerves to start.

Which brings me to another question: We talk all the time about “winning the big points,” but this presupposes that we know when a big point is happening. Sometimes, though, we only recognize the most crucial moment in a match when it’s far back in the rearview mirror. Then we think—“Why didn’t I just win that one point? Everything would have been totally different.”

Today that point came with Sharapova serving at 0-3 and down break point. She double-faulted in that game and still seemed to be trying to find her legs, her movement, her range, her game. She needed to hold just to settle herself. Lisicki appeared to be picking up where she had left off in her previous matches, dominating rallies and serving big. With a break point for 4-0, Lisicki tried a drop shot and missed. It seemed like an innocent mistake at the time, but Sharapova went on to hold, and in the next game she turned into a completely different player. She won one point with a full-blooded crosscourt forehand, and two more with a play that worked well for her the rest of the way, a hard return of serve down the middle and near the baseline. It was a play that helped get that break of serve, and an even more crucial one to make it 5-4. No one knew it then, but the match was over.

Asked afterward how she turned it around, Sharapova started with a garden-variety comment. “I told myself to take it one point at a time and really focus.” But what seemed clichéd at first turned into a simple but important insight into how Sharapova operates. “I felt like I just kind of got into my zone,” she said. She found her space, the place where she could block everything out, including, and most important, her own bad play.

Living within her limits on court is something that Sharapova has learned to do since having shoulder surgery. Despite winning in seemingly routine fashion, the double fault haunted her, just as it had in her semifinal loss in Paris. She committed 13 today.

“Coming from the indoor match a couple days ago,” she said, referring to the comparatively windy conditions on Centre Court this afternoon, “I felt like my toss was all over the place today.” But Sharapova also said that she knew she couldn’t panic over the double faults, that she had to work around them. And even when they started to come more frequently in the second set, she still found her serve when she needed it. The key moment came in the second game of the second set. Sharapova had broken a despondent Lisicki in the first game and then taken a 40-15 lead. Suddenly her toss went wayward and she double-faulted twice. This was the moment of truth; was her serve going to betray her after all? But she got it in on the next two points, and got Lisicki to send two balls long. Nothing about the moment was pretty, but Sharapova had manufactured a game and kept her momentum intact. The danger had passed. Not long after, she would be up 5-1.

Of course, Maria had some help. After blowing that 3-0 lead and losing the first set 6-4, Lisicki appeared to have nothing left mentally at the start of the second. Forehands that had gone for winners for two weeks now sailed well out. Drop shots that had kept her opponents guessing now spun feebly into the net. Her own serve, perhaps the best single shot of the women’s tournament, followed Sharapova’s south. Down 2-0, Lisicki made an even bigger mistake. With a light mist falling and seemingly more rain on the way any minute—the sky was piled with thick, dark clouds—she petitioned chair umpire Louise Engzell to stop play. Engzell didn’t stop it. Lisicki, distracted, was broken again. And despite the best attempts of Sharapova’s serve to get her back in the match, Lisicki couldn’t take advantage. She seemed gutted by the first set defeat; the purposeful calm she had shown all fortnight had descended into forlorn confusion.

Which was a shame. The breakout story of the women’s tournament dissolved in the pale, dreary light and swirling breeze on Centre Court. It felt a long way from the place where Lisicki had recorded her two emotional three-set wins under the roof, against Li Na and Marion Bartoli. She wasn’t the same self-assured ball-belter that she had been in those controlled conditions. And she wasn’t the same when faced with Sharapova’s flat ground stroke rockets. The hitter was outhit.

But this is a run to build on. Lisicki came in as a wild card and left us with at least one indelible moment, her tearful burst of joy after beating Li, and her shouted answer to a question from the BBC a few minutes later:

“Sabine, can you put your emotions into words?”

Lisicki wiped away a tear and said, simply, with a smile, “No!”

With her walloped, noiseless strokes and winningly even-keel demeanor, the German is a woman to hope for.

The player who vanquished her is a woman to watch once again. This will be Sharapova’s first Slam final appearance since she won the Australian Open in 2008.

We probably won’t have to worry about her being distracted by the moment. Today, after she’d won, Sharapova looked briefly toward her box, and her fiancé, Sasha Vujacic. He, naturally, pumped his first in her direction, and then put his fingers to his temples, as if to say, “Up here, you did it up here, with your mind.” It was the right message, I suppose, but it never got through. Sharapova, sticking to her well-worn victory ritual, had turned away to blow a kiss to the crowd on the other side of the stadium. She was ignoring him.

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by Pete Bodo

LONDON—Petra Kvitova was about to toss the ball to serve at 3-1, 40-love in the fifth game of the first set today at Wimbledon when an alarm went off in Centre Court, causing her to pull up momentarily. Both the source of and reason for the siren remain unknown, but I have my own theory. The hoary heads at the All England Club had determined that Kvitova’s serve is so menacing a weapon that both her opponents and the public need to be alerted, much like they would be during an air raid. This, sadly, is a subject with which elderly British citizens who lived through the Blitz of World War II are more than familiar.

The interruption was relatively brief and completely ineffective, at least in terms of making Azarenka’s life easier or safer. Kvitova immediately went back to the business at hand and blasted her way to a 6-1 first-set win. Azarenka won the second set, but Kvitova was able to notch a service break in the second game of the third set, and won the match on the strength of it, 6-1, 3-6, 6-2. It was a tightly scripted, orderly match; a testament to the idea that the advantage of serving ought to impose a satisfying sense of structure on a match, particularly one on a grass court.

“I think she started, you know, serving, and she really played very well on her service game,” Azarenka conceded afterwards. “It was a little bit of a bad luck. . . I just miss just couple (in the third set), and she really took great advantage of it.”

If you didn’t know better, you might have plopped down on Centre Court and wondered if Azarenka and Kvitova weren’t the WTA version of the Bryan twins, warming each other up for a doubles match. The young ladies had identical hairdos—the almost obligatory French braid—and similar, pristine white samurai headbands. They were both attired in chaste white. Anyone less than eagle-eyed was more likely to tell them apart by which hand they used to serve, or better yet, what we might call their auditory signatures.

Azarenka accompanies nearly every shot with a prolonged shriek of something like ecstacy. While largely silent, Kvitova will react to winning a particularly important point with a terrified shriek—you expect her to leap up on a stool, as if she’d just spotted a mouse. My pal Doug Robson of USA Today, who really ought to apply his imagination to more useful things, suggests that Kvitova sounds like a pterodactyl giving birth.

Oddly, though, Kvitova is largely silent during play. Today, she appeared to be making a strenuous effort to remain calm and in control of the situation—just what you might expect from a 21-year-old trying to surmount the semifinal barrier for the first time at a Grand Slam event, and this the most renowned of them all, as well as the one most favorable to her game and technical assets. In fact, if there was a danger in her approach, it probably lay less in getting careless than in becoming tied up in one too many knots. The silence was misleading, for at almost every critical moment she subtly clenched a fist or went into a momentary spasm, whirling to glance at the player guest box.

A player in that state is always prone to relax, even if it’s inadvertently, after she wins a set—and so it was today. After losing the first set, Azarenka bolted to a 3-0 lead in the second and had two more break points with Kvitova serving at 1-4. Had Azarenka converted one of them, it might have opened floodgates. But Kvitova held fast, thereby buying time to get her game—and composure—back on track.

Kvitova’s first-serve conversion rate was merely good (60%), but she won 73% of her successful first-serve points. More important, her serve kept Azarenka, an aggressive if somewhat one-dimensional baseliner, back on her heels. Azarenka had a chance to level the match in the third with Kvitova serving at 3-1, 15-40. Kvitova dismissed the first break point with a bold attack and forehand volley winner, and the other with an inside-out forehand winner. A deadly second serve to the Azarenka backhand at deuce, followed by a wide-swinging sliced ace, secured the game—and foiled Azarenka’s last threat. The thread that ran through the entire match was the effectiveness of Kvitova’s serve.

“Well, yeah, I think it’s about I have a good serve,” Kvitova said afterward. “And I’m not afraid of going to volley because we practiced with my father when I was young.”

It isn’t really the speed of Kvitova’s serve that bowls anyone over. Even in an overpowering performance of the kind that Kvitova turned in earlier in the tournament against Yanina Wickmayer (Kvitova crushed her, 6-0, 6-2), she rarely tickles the speed gun much past 110 MPH, where some others (Sabine Lisicki comes to mind) are routinely breaking the 120 mph barrier. Rather, it’s that Kvitova fully exploits the formidable combination of her height (6′ 0″), reach, and left-handed-ness—perhaps more than comparable WTA pros, or even many of the ATP southpaws.

The key serve for Kvitova is that ad-court, wide-swinging slice. It’s a devastating serve, easily differentiated from the standard cannonballs, kickers and even right-or-left-handed slices. That serve almost belongs in a category of its own, because of the slightly different rotational demands it puts on the server’s shoulders. John McEnroe sliced his way into the International Tennis Hall of Fame with that serve, and Feliciano Lopez has it; Rafael Nadal doesn’t exploit it, and Martina Navratilova never really developed her heavy swinger either.

The match statistics confirm the extent to which speed isn’t the critical component in this devastating serve. In many of her matches, Kvitova barely breaks 100 MPH with the serve that ought to be her most potent, that swinger sliced wide in the ad court. You’d never confuse her delivery with any other 99 MPH serve on the tour. The credit for that serve seems to belong to Kvitova’s coach, David Kotyza.

Kvitova is a shy young lady of few words, and when she was asked how and when she developed that natural hook serve, she surprised us with her simple answer: “Well, I didn’t have good serve, so I had lots of work with this. You have to ask my coach, because we are together with coach three years already, so it’s three years ago.”

Overall, it was an excellent performance by Kvitova, and yet another cruel blow to Azarenka’s ambitions. The growing meme, that Azarenka is a kind of hologram who vanishes on the biggest of occasions, doesn’t seem quite fair or accurate. I asked her about the bad luck she’s had running into women destined to win tournament and she replied, “I actually haven’t lost to anybody who didn’t win the tournament since March. So if you can say it’s a bad luck, I don’t know.” She tried a joke. “Maybe I’m just the one who gives so much confidence or whatever. . .But, yeah, I think I’m playing always somebody who is in a great form, but I have to take it.”

I had to admire Azarenka’s attitude following this difficult loss (she was beaten by a comparably adept Li Na at the French Open), especially when she responded to a question put by someone who obviously thought she ought to have been shattered by the loss. 

“Well, I may not show you that I’m disappointed right now. I’m not going to sit and cry here that I lost the match. But I am disappointed with the loss. . . I have to, you know, keep working hard.” She illustrated her next statement with convincing gestures. “I cannot sit here and cry, ‘Oh, my God, I lost today. What do I have to do now?’”

Today was Kvitova’s day, but Azarenka’s suggested that she will have a comparable one of her own, and soon.

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LONDON—Grand Slam tournaments often produce surprise semifinalists, and it always to leads to much weeping and gnashing of teeth among the usual suspects at that stage: To wit, the top names are apt to be spotted shaking their fists at the ether, bellowing, “Oh, why couldn’t I be the one who gets [fill in the name of your choice, from Martin Verkerk to Rainer Schuettler]????”

It isn’t going to be that way this year. Top seed and world No. 1 Rafael Nadal and No. 4 Andy Murray are probably perfectly content to let No. 2 Novak Djokovic deal with that big bronze bundle of thunder, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. It may seem a misnomer to call Tsonga a “surprise semifinalist,” but the bottom line is that he’s the No. 12 seed—and while he’s a former Grand Slam finalist (Australian Open, 2008), few pundits would have penciled him into the final four here, at least not before the Queen’s Club tournament.

In the final of that event, Tsonga was up a set and a break on Andy Murray, although he let it slip away and lost, 6-4 in the third. But then, in a familiar scenario, he lost meekly to Radek Stepanek at Eastbourne, winning just five games. As usual, Tsonga was an unknown quantity coming into Wimbledon, but now we all know, and most of us probably would agree with this assessment rendered by Rafael Nadal:

“You know how difficult is this surface, how difficult is everything. Because when you play against one player like Tsonga that he has this fantastic serve, you are under pressure all the time even if you are winning two sets to love, because you have a break, you have few mistakes with your serve, he has a break, probably he has the set. And that’s every time. . .”

Tsonga has an outstanding, 5-2 record against Djokovic, all the matches on hard courts, but none more current than 2010—before Djokovic morphed into the main challenger to Nadal’s sovereignty. Still, Tsonga promises to be a particularly troublesome opponent for Djokovic, who has frittered away opportunities at Wimbledon almost every year he’s played here.

In 2007, Djokovic allowed a two-sets lead against Marcos Baghdatis to disappear, and while he won the match in five sets, he sustained an injury that ultimately contributed to his having to retire against Nadal in the semis. The following year, he lost in the second round to a guy famous for stinking up the joint here, Marat Safin. In 2009, he was beaten by Tommy Haas, who’s never been in a major final. And last year, he lost a semifinal match against Tomas Berdych, one that he later admitted was a passive, strategic disaster.

In Tsonga, Djokovic is facing a man much like Berdych—a big, powerful, hard-serving competitor who isn’t afraid to take chances or seize the initiative in a match. We all saw how quickly and comprehensively Tsonga turned the tables on Federer the other day; a mere glimmer of hope in the third set turned into a supernova that pulverized the No. 3 seed. While Federer had a two-sets to none lead at one point, he had just one break point in the entire match.

This is bad news for Djokovic, who followed form and allowed his last opponent (Bernard Tomic) a lot of wriggle room. Granted, Tomic’s off-pace, tricky game irritates Djokovic, but he can’t afford to be so up-and-down against a player who can put a lid on a match as firmly as does Tsonga. “Let’s say the performance against (Michael) Llodra was great,” Djokovic said yesterday. “Against Baghdatis, not so great. First two rounds was really good. Kind of up and down. But hopefully now it’s going to go up.”

The bottom line: This one is the upset special. I’m picking Tsonga in four sets.

The other semifinal is less compelling, partly due to recent history. Nadal has is 11-4 overall against Andy Murray, and 4-2 against him in Grand Slam events (both of Murray’s wins were on hard courts). Nadal handled Murray in straight sets in Paris just weeks ago, and he’s won their only two meetings at Wimbledon, including last year’s semifinal, in straight sets as well.

One of Nadal’s trademarks is the genuine respect he has for all his opponents and rivals, and you can tell it’s a genuine component of his character when he digs down into the memory bank and  extemporaneously says, “I think I played two fantastic matches against Andy (at Wimbledon). 2008 probably was a different situation, because Andy started to play really well that year, but especially after that.

“Last year I beat him here in the semifinals, but was very close match, even if was in straight sets.  Second set he had a set point with his serve. . . For me, the last few months of Andy was very, very good.”

As it turns out, the panic over the state of Murray’s game, which reached a fevered pitch this spring, was overblown. Murray’s resurgence is complete, and may never have been much of a makeover anyway. As he said: “You know, I was not in a great position mentally. But, I was trying to say all along I didn’t feel like I was in sort of a crisis. . . It’s not like you lose your game overnight. It doesn’t go away. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of time to find it.”

The problem I see for Murray in this match is that the relatively low bounce and speed of Centre Court greatly reduces his counter-punching options. His style is best suited to a court that’s fast enough for him to hit winners and exploit potential changes of pace, but slow enought to be capable of producing a high bounce—high enough to allow him to get a look at the high-quality shots of his opponents and, ideally, enable him to make a smooth transition from defense to offense.

One intangible that could hurt Murray in this match is his friendship and regard for Rafa, which seems a bit more authentic and deeply felt than the de rigeur if genuine esteem he feels for his other rivals. They are, as both of them let us know the other day in their press conferences, PlayStation buddies.

“Normally we play PlayStation outside the court when we are in the same hotels in the tournament,” Nadal said. “Now he really don’t want to play more. He lost the last few times.” Nadal smiled. “Well, no, seriously. Well, seriously, that’s true. He lost almost every time. He played with his friend Danny (Vallverdu) against (Juan) Monaco and me, and we won.”

Murray retorted to that blast: “He (Rafa) actually isn’t very good at PlayStation. His partner is very good. He plays with Juan Monaco, and Juan Monaco is very good.” Murray smiled. “As a team, they play well.”

Tomorrow, it will be about rackets, not joysticks, and grunts of effort rather than electronic blips and cues. And while Juan Monaco won’t be at Nadal’s side, I still think Rafa will win.

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At bay at 0-3 down in the first set of her Wimbledon semifinal against Sabine Lisicki, Maria Sharapova must have felt like she was facing a distorted ghost from her past. Lisicki, the Birmingham champion on a 10-match grass-court winning streak, was the younger underdog showing no fear. But as I wrote previously, there comes a moment in most of these plucky stories—outside of the movies—when a champion steps up and restores order. That was Sharapova’s task today and she was equal to it, defeating Lisicki, 6-4, 6-3, for her first Wimbledon final appearance since she won the title in 2004.

After an excruciatingly nervous start, Sharapova finally won a point off her second serve with a forehand winner and held for 1-3. It would prove to be the beginning of the end for the sunny German. Sharapova’s returning has been impressive this Wimbledon, and with Lisicki failing to make the aces that had marked her run to this point, it was a big return from Sharapova that got her back on serve. Looking progressively more dialed-in as Lisicki’s game faded away, Sharapova’s returning earned her another break at 5-4, and she served out the first set with the aid of her punishing cross-court forehand.

Lisicki’s confidence and accuracy had utterly deserted her, and she double-faulted away a break at the beginning of the second set. Down 0-30 on her next service game as rain started to fall, she was desperate to stop play and attempt to regroup. Denied by the umpire—rightly, as it turned out, as the rain soon disappeared—she was broken to 15. Two double-faults by Sharapova in the next game pegged the fifth seed back to a single break, but Lisicki was once again unable to make her serve or forehand hold up. With Sharapova serving at 4-1 in perhaps the most pivotal game of the match, Lisicki earned two break points, but Sharapova’s groundstrokes were at their fearsome best; she saved both with clean winners off both wings to hold.

With nothing to lose, Lisicki’s first serve and explosive forehand finally returned and swung freely; she not only held for the first time in the second set but broke Sharapova as the Russian served for the match. It was too little, too late, however, as Sharapova’s brilliant returning off Lisicki’s serve let her break for the match and her first Grand Slam final since the 2008 Australian Open.

Lisicki left the court smiling, with much to be proud of despite her disappointing performance, but it’s Sharapova who will play Petra Kvitova for the title on Saturday. She must be understandably concerned, however, about today’s 13 double faults—some consecutive, at least one in every service game. Sharapova will have to hope for a better serving day against Kvitova, or for the Czech to be as nervous and unable to capitalize as Lisicki.

—Hannah Wilks

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Scanning the service box calmly, as if reading the top line of an eye chart, Petra Kvitova slammed an ace out wide and unleashed a celebratory scream that pierced the Centre Court calm, a surround sound that silenced Victoria Azarenka’s final threat. The eighth-seeded Czech’s lone ace of the last set sealed a hard-fought hold, helping Kvitova power past Azarenka, 6-1, 3-6, 6-2, to reach the Wimbledon final for the first time.

A year ago, the shy blonde from Bilovec was seeking her first career grass-court win when she arrived at SW19 as the world No. 62. On Saturday, the 21-year-old will face either 2004 champion Maria Sharapova or German wild card Sabine Lisicki for the Venus Rosewater Dish. She is the first left-hander to reach the ladies’ Wimbledon final since her tennis idol, Martina Navratilova, advanced to the 1994 title match. Navratilova, who was seated next to tennis aficionado and global adventurer Sir Richard Branson, had to be impressed with Kvitova’s unrelenting attacking style today. She hit four times as many winners as Azarenka (40 to 9) with creative combinations and cracking shots down the line, including nine aces.

Kvitova worked out the kinks—and saved a break point—in the opening game, spinning a short-angle ace wide to hold. Both women began to accelerate through their shots, and a pulverizing 15-stroke rally ended with Azarenka pushed backward by the depth of a Kvitova drive. The Belarusian dropped serve to trail 1-3.

Serving for the set, Kvitova showed off the stinging serve that makes her so lethal, cracking three consecutive aces. She then opted for the crash rather than the pass in drilling a screaming shot at the shins of a net-rushing Azarenka, who couldn’t cope with the fury of the drive. That shot concluded an overwhelming offensive assault from Kvitova, who surrendered just three points on her first serve while winning seven of 11 points played on Azarenka’s.

Reduced to a reactionary role in the first set, Azarenka played with more proactive footwork in the second, trying to move the slower Kvitova and force the 6-footer to scoop low balls off the lawn.  Azarenka won eight of the first 10 points, survived a break point Kvitova created with her 16th winner, and coaxed a cluster of errors to hold for 3-0. Reading Kvitova’s serve better and cutting off the angles more effectively, Azarenka extended her lead to 4-1. When the lefty looped a forehand long on the third set point, Azarenka forced a decisive set.

Targeting the Kvitova forehand, Azarenka erased one early break point, but ambition got the best of her as a running, cross-court forehand strayed wide, giving Kvitova the break and a 2-0 lead. At its most basic terms, the match pitted Kvitova’s power against Azarenka’s consistency. Kvitova refused to crack in facing double break point in the fifth game and held for 4-1.

Unable to withstand the pace and depth of Kvitova’s drives, Azarenka clanked a double fault to conclude the match. The girl who grew up idolizing Navratilova is now one win from joining her as a Wimbledon champion.

—Richard Pagliaro

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