LONDON: Serena Williams booked a Wimbledon final rematch against Angelique Kerber as the seven-time champion marched into her 10th All England Club title match with a 6-2, 6-4 rout of Julia Goerges on Thursday.

On 20-match winning streak at Wimbledon, Serena is the third oldest female Grand Slam finalist in the Open era at 36 years and 291 days.

She will face German world No. 10 Kerber on Saturday in a repeat of the 2016 showpiece won by Williams.

Williams has often blasted her rivals off Centre Court with ferocious power-hitting, but German 13th seed Goerges was sent packing with a more subtle 70-minute display featuring just 16 winners and five aces.

In only her fourth tournament since the birth of her daughter Olympia in September, the 23-time Grand Slam champion is closing in on her first major title as a mother.

The American star will have history in her sights against Kerber as she tries to equal Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slams singles titles.

Serena will go into her 30th Grand Slam final — her first since winning the 2017 Australian Open — holding a 6-2 lead in her head to head record against Kerber.

Williams, who missed Wimbledon last year due to her pregnancy, won the grass-court Grand Slam on her previous two visits in 2015 and 2016.

Earlier, Kerber raced into her second Wimbledon final and fourth Grand Slam showpiece as the German crushed former French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko 6-3, 6-3 in 67 minutes.

Kerber, who also won the Australian Open in 2016, is bidding to become the first German woman to win Wimbledon since Graf in 1996.

Meanwhile, it was a case of down but definitely not out late on Wednesday as a Rafael Nadal kept picking himself off a slippery and dusty Centre Court surface to storm into the semi-finals with a pulsating 7-5, 6-7 (7-9), 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 over Juan Martin del Potro.

Just 90 minutes after defending champion Roger Federer was sensationally knocked out by South African Kevin Anderson, it seemed as if the grasscourt major would lose its top two seeds as Argentine Del Potro took a two-sets-to-one lead.

It was not as if Nadal was playing badly as he had lost only nine points on serve before heading into the ninth game of the second set.

But just before that game started, Federer’s shock demise was flashed up on the giant on-court scoreboard and it was as if that threw the Spaniard off his stride and he fluffed his lines to drop his serve.

After Nadal squandered four set points in the third set tiebreak, with a double fault on one of them, Del Potro made him pay as he pounced on his first chance to raise the prospect of another astonishing upset.

But the second seed stayed alive by taking the fourth set before the gripping drama continued in an electrifying deciding set in which both players were left diving after volleys and slipping over as they chased after blinding winners.

Nadal ended the four hour and 48 minute thriller with a backhand volley winner past a lunging Del Potro who ended the contest lying flat on his stomach.

Next up for the Spaniard is a Friday blockbuster last-four showdown with Serb Novak Djokovic.

Anderson’s semi-final opponent will be American John Isner, who reached his first Grand Slam semi-final as he beat Canadian Milos Raonic 6-7 (5-7), 7-6 (7-9), 6-4, 6-3.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2018