Serena Williams: "Garbine has been around a while. She's played really big here. She's beaten me before. She knows what to do"

"Garbine has been around a while. She's played really big here. She's beaten me before. 
She knows what to do"

In tennis, the mental game can be almost as pivotal as the physical, never more so than when the player across the net is Serena Williams.

 Maria Sharapova went into their Wimbledon semi-final dragging the baggage of what some US media outlets refer to as their “un-rivalry” – 16 straight defeats in the last 11 years, with her only two wins back in 2004. 
In search of some competitive way to rationalise those numbers, the Russian told the media: “Every time it’s a new match.” Yes – along with a new defeat, it seems. Sharapova was about as much of a problem as the wasp the No.1 seed swatted away shortly before notching up a double break in the first set. For Sharapova – the only other active player with a complete set of Slam titles – the 6-2, 6-4 defeat in 79 minutes was largely a familiar story. 
Williams flattened her to reach her first Wimbledon final in three years. With Serena into her 25th Grand Slam final, at least it can be said of the player barring her way to a second calendar Slam that this opponent has actually beaten her at some stage in the last decade or so. Step forward the No.20 seed Garbine Muguruza, who shocked Serena at Roland Garros in 2014. 
That day the Spaniard dished out the most humiliating Grand Slam defeat of Williams’ career, permitting her just four games, and afterwards the victor said this: “A change is coming. Some time the new generation has to come through and I think now is the moment.”