The Best at Her Best

“Her level match after match is rising,” said Patrick Mouratoglou, Serena Williams’ coach, before her semifinal with Elena Vesnina on Thursday. “She’s serving better and better, and moving better and better.”

Mouratoglou, the man who watches Serena’s every swing and tracks her every mood, would know. And it was hard to argue with him. In her fourth-round and quarterfinal wins, over Svetlana Kuznetsova and Anastasia Pavluchenkova, Serena was in what veteran watchers of the world No. 1 like to call “lockdown mode.” Gone were the slow starts from the first week, gone were the exasperated reactions and brimming emotions, gone were the racquets sent spinning into photographers’ laps. Gone, most important, were the tight swings, the unforced errors, and the go-for-broke shot selection. As Mouratoglou likes to tell her, “Stay calm, because when you’re calm, you find solutions.”  A calm Serena is a dangerous Serena.

But I doubt Vesnina, despite her 0-4 record against Serena, knew exactly how dangerous Serena was going to be in their semifinal. The 50th-ranked Russian posed no problems, but the American still had all of the solutions. While the stats never tell the whole story, in this case they tell an epic tale of excellence: Serena hit 11 aces, won 28 of 31 points on her serve and didn’t face a break point. She smacked 28 winners against seven errors and won 53 points to Vesnina’s 21. And she did it all in 48 minutes. When it was over, I had trouble remembering how Vesnina had found time to steal two games.

“I feel really dominant when I do serve like that,” Serena said.

“Clinical” is a term we usually reserve for the other world No. 1, but that’s the only way to describe Serena’s method in this one. She didn’t play with any excess emotion and didn’t waste a second of time during or between rallies; she took the most direct path to winning them each time. The points were so quick, clean, and efficient that she didn’t need to be ruthless about them. It had been awhile since I’d seen Serena hit a running forehand pass, at full stretch, for a winner, but she curled one an inch from the baseline to go up 5-0 in the second set. And she finished in appropriate style, by moving forward and knocking off an easy forehand volley—no muss, no fuss, and no doubts.

There was some chatter afterward about the disparity between Serena’s blowout win today, and the marathon five-setters that Roger Federer and Andy Murray came through on Wednesday. For me, dramatic marathons are memorable, but so are gem-like performances like this one. Steffi Graf blazing, gazelle-like, through the four majors in 1988, Federer floating across the grass at Wimbledon a decade ago, Rafael Nadal dishing out punishment on the dirt at Roland Garros and Serena on a day of sheer other-level dominance: Seeing the best at their best lets you know how well the sport can be played.

But a question remains: Can Serena do it one more time? Going into this match I had wondered: Does “lockdown mode” still mean what it used to mean with her? Does her strong play in the middle of the tournament still automatically lead to a title at the end of it? That hasn’t been the case at the last three majors. This year in Australia, in particular, she was brilliant against Maria Sharapova in the quarters and Agnieszka Radwanska in the semis, only to come up two games short against Angelique Kerber, who was making her Grand Slam final debut. Is her loss to Roberta Vinci at the U.S. Open last year still shaking just enough of Serena’s once-unshakable confidence?

Listening to a very composed Serena at her presser on Thursday, it was hard to discern any anxiety about this Saturday's final.

“I felt great in other tournaments as well,” Serena acknowledged. “But I feel a little different. I just feel relaxed. I feel more at peace than maybe I have been in the past.”

Serena has spent this tournament letting us, and herself, know that she’s still as psychologically strong as ever. “I know mentally, no one can break me,” she said after beating back Christina McHale, and a Centre Court crowd that was rooting for her opponent, last week. But on Thursday I liked that Serena admitted that she has learned from both her triumphs and her setbacks. Accepting the possibility of defeat is the first step to avoiding it.

“It’s been experience,” Serena said when asked why she feels ready for this final, “it’s been success, it’s been failure, it’s been everything that created the opportunity to be ready in those situations.”

Whatever happens in this situation, it will be interesting to see how Serena, who will be 35 next month, handles the Wimbledon endgame. Is she not quite the closer she once was? Or is this lull in her Grand Slam march just another temporary obstacle for her to overcome on her way to passing Graf?

If Serena stays as calm as she has the last three rounds, you get the feeling she’ll find the solution.