It couldn’t really happen, could it? The prospect of two sisters in their mid-thirties playing each other in the final of the world’s greatest tennis tournament, 14 long years after they first achieved the feat, seems just too fanciful.
Yet you just have to mention the names: Serena and Venus. Then you start to believe. We’ve learnt to know the Williams sisters only too well. These two colossal forces of nature have made the outlandish seem almost routine.
On ladies’ semi-final afternoon here at the 130th Wimbledon, only two women can stop these sisters of no mercy from a final collision that the Centre Court never thought it would witness again.
Who would be in the shoes of Venus’s opponent, Angelique Kerber, and Serena’s challenger, Elena Vesnina, both charged with scuppering such a perfect story?
But scupper it they just might. Both have their own compelling scripts to pursue. Kerber is the German leftie seeking to join the two-Slam club after her Australian Open triumph in January, and feeling confident that she could become the first woman from her country since her one-time idol Steffi Graf to lift the title.
Vesnina? Well, the unseeded Russian’s smile of incredulity as she pondered the prospect of meeting the six-time champion Serena told of a woman who has yet to come to terms with what she is doing here. Understandable, as hers is such an unlikely journey.
Earlier this year, the doubles specialist’s form had slumped to the extent that she had dropped from the top 30 to beyond the world’s top 100 and had to start qualifying just to enter tournaments. Now approaching her 30th birthday, it looked as if her days as a leading singles player were over.
“I'm really happy that it didn't break me up. I think the difficult times, every single player has to go through it because it makes you better, it makes you stronger,” she recalled.
And, hey presto, Wimbledon has sprinkled its magic on her, just as it has when she twice reached the doubles final here. At the 42nd time of asking in any Grand Slam, she progressed past the fourth round and, having beaten her doubles partner Ekaterina Makarova in the last 16, finds herself in an uncharted world.
“That's a dream semi-final. I think nothing can be better than playing against Serena in a semi-final on Centre Court at Wimbledon,” says the Ukrainian-born world No.50, who moved to Russia’s Winter Olympic city of Sochi as a young girl. “I am very surprised. It was like a dream came true.”
The problem is that Serena tends to stamp on Centre Court dreams. There has been a bit of an edge, a moodiness about her this past fortnight as she homes in on that record-equalling 22nd Grand Slam title, but she now seems to be discovering a rampant groove.
Vesnina knows what she has to do. She sat courtside in Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena during the Australian Open final and says she learnt from watching the athletic Kerber sticking doggedly to her game plan and covering the court manically, like a perpetual moving wall on every point, waiting for Serena’s level occasionally to drop.
Which it did, leading to Kerber’s great breakthrough as she played the match of her life. Now, even after an uneven season since Melbourne, as she’s struggled occasionally to adapt to her new celebrity, the German knows that she will become the world No.1 if she goes on to win Wimbledon and Serena is knocked out on Thursday.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. First, the No.4 seed, who has not dropped a set here yet, has to tame the other, ageless Williams, who seems on a giddy high, talking about feeling as if she could go on forever and sounding as if she quite likes the idea that she is starring in some sort of movie.
Just imagine. A 36-year-old former great sees her career decline as her younger sister becomes the greatest of all-time, struggles with a debilitating illness, Sjogren’s Syndrome, that in theory ought to destroy her everyday life let alone her tennis career, but battles back for one more wonderful fortnight in the Wimbledon sun (and rain), where she sets up a meeting with her beloved sibling in the final.
Yet the plotline only really works if Venus wins the whole shebang for a sixth time. “Like that movie Wimbledon,” she muses. “Real life is what Hollywood is based on. So, hey, let's do it!”