And so is the shadow of one of the legends of our game, Steffi Graf.

If the great Serena Williams can defeat Angelique Kerber in what looks a potentially terrific climax to the ladies’ tournament, she will join Graf as the most garlanded woman player in tennis’s Open Era.

Yet could it be that Graf, these days a 47-year-old mum-of-two happily married to Andre Agassi in the US, may still prove the main impediment to Williams two decades after she won the last of her seven Wimbledon crowns?

For it’s not just that the German’s milestone of 22 Grand Slams has remained frustratingly beyond Serena’s reach since she won here last year. It’s also that Graf is the unseen guiding hand behind Kerber, the player she grew up idolising and the woman whose advice and support helped her reboot a faltering career 15 months ago.

She spent three days practising with the champion and Agassi at their home in Las Vegas and soaking up her words of wisdom. It all felt slightly surreal.

Here she was having “high-intensity” sessions with the champion she used to watch winning Wimbledon on the TV as a kid and, astonishingly, she could almost believe Graf was moving as sweetly and hitting as ferociously as in her heyday.

It infused new self-confidence into a player who, as a 2011 US Open and 2012 Wimbledon semi-finalist, had long had the talent but whose career now just seemed to feel a bit directionless.

“She was telling me that I’m on a good way and trying to give me positive comments that I should believe in myself and everything is good,” Kerber recalled.

Lo and behold, the new Kerber began to emerge, winning four tour titles last year and then, in the Australian Open in January, earning the sensational three-set triumph over Williams that transformed her career and, ironically, protected Graf’s record. "Yeah, I think I helped Steffi right now," she beamed in Melbourne, before jumping in the Yarra to celebrate.

Her victory, though, also provided a new spur for Williams too. One of her many extraordinary attributes is that, even at 34, she can take setbacks like that and still learn from them.

“She (Kerber) came out swinging, ready to win,” Williams recalled. “She was fearless. That's something I learnt. When I go into a final, I too need to be fearless like she was. It was inspiring to realise there's a lot of things that I need to improve on.”

So even though subsequent losses, particularly the woundingly heavy one to Garbine Muguruza in the French Open final, have continued to offer opponents precious glimpses of the world No.1’s vulnerability, Williams has offered every impression on her favourite lawns here that she’s rediscovered her cloak of invincibility.

She’s seemed a mass of contradictions at times this fortnight, saying she’s at peace and relaxed while coming across as the picture of coiled intensity on court. There was a spectacular self-berating, racket-smashing episode in her one really challenging match against Christina McHale.

She talked of a “hard” afternoon even after blasting poor Elena Vesnina off court in the fastest semi-final on record and woe betide the man who had the temerity to suggest that, as she’d achieved so much, perhaps she might have lost her old appetite for the fray? “Yeah, I have no hunger anymore. Yeah, right,” she responded, shooting a look that could kill.