Keeping it old school
If serve-and-volleying is dead, as relevant to modern-day Wimbledon as white tennis balls, no one has told Barbora Strycova, an unseeded 33-year-old Czech who keeps rushing into net as if it's 1979 rather than 2019. So far in The Championships, she has serve-and-volleyed on 20 per cent of her service points, which is comfortably the highest percentage of anyone in the ladies' singles.
For comparison, her semi-final opponent, Serena Williams, prefers to stay back; she has played 311 service points in singles this Fortnight and only once has she dashed forward after her serve to play a volley.
Of course, their differing strategies aren't the only things separating the pair. While Strycova has gone further than ever before at a major - and is the oldest first-time Grand Slam singles semi-finalist of the Open era - Williams has long since disappeared into the tennis stratosphere. Winning Wimbledon would bring her a 24th Grand Slam singles titles, equalling Margaret Court's all-time record. It would be an eighth Wimbledon singles title, just one short of Martina Navratilova's record. Last summer's runner-up, who turns 38 in September, is attempting to become the oldest Grand Slam singles finalist of the Open era.
A first for Romania or Ukraine?
However Simona Halep's semi-final with Elina Svitolina plays out, history will be made. Either Halep wins and becomes the first Romanian to appear in a Wimbledon ladies' singles final, or Svitolina advances and becomes the first Ukrainian woman to play for the Venus Rosewater Dish. This is the second time that Halep has ventured this far into the Fortnight, after losing to Canada's Eugenie Bouchard in the 2014 semi-finals, and she also has the experience of winning a Grand Slam after her success at Roland-Garros last season. Svitolina, meanwhile, is the first Ukrainian woman to compete in a Grand Slam semi-final.
Mahut's second act
Every time you walk past Court 18, you can't help but think of Nicolas Mahut's first round singles match against John Isner at the 2010 Championships. Spread over three days, that freakishly long match lasted 11 hours and five minutes, which is commemorated with a plaque on the wall.
But there is much more to the Frenchman at the All England Club than that epic defeat; he's also a fine doubles player. He won the team title here in 2016 with countryman Pierre-Hugues Herbert, and this summer, playing alongside another Frenchman in Edouard Roger-Vasselin, he is through to the semi-finals. After a third-round victory over American twins Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan, who are the most successful doubles pair in history, Mahut and Roger-Vassselin beat the top seeds, Poland's Lukasz Kubot and Brazil's Marcelo Melo. They now play Croatia's Ivan Dodig and Slovakia's Filip Polasek.
The next generation
Emma Navarro, daughter of billionaire businessman Ben Navarro, is the top seed in the girls' singles. At 18, she is three years older than fellow American teenager Cori Gauff, who made the fourth round of the ladies' singles. Navarro plays Japan's Natsumi Kawaguchi for a place in the semi-finals.
Compose yourself
Anton Matusevich, a British teenager who in his downtime "loves playing" Bach on the piano, defeated the top seed in the boys' singles, Denmark's Holger Vitus Nodskov Rune, in the third round. He plays Japan's Shintaro Mochizuki in the quarter-finals.
