Women's Semifinals
The women delivered another excitement-packed day at Wimbledon. The day opened with 20th seeded Garbine Muguruza taking on the 13th seed, Aga Radwanska. Radwanska was by far the more experienced player, but her pre-Wimbledon campaign has been less than stellar. Though Radwanska played much better, Muguruza simply brought too much firepower and advanced in three sets to her first ever Slam final. In the other semifinal, Serena Williams continued her dominance over Maria Sharapova. The world number one had little trouble in a straight sets win and much to Sharapova's dismay, Williams collected her 17th straight win over her Russian opponent.
Post Wimbledon
Win or lose, Garbine Muguruza will move into top ten in the WTA rankings. She'll be the 113th player to reach the WTA top ten and should she win, she will jump all the way to #6.
Against the Odds
Though Muguruza would surely like to win her first Slam, it'll be a tall order against one of the most dominant players in history in Serena Williams. And only 3 players in the Open Era have won Wimbledon with a seeding outside of the top ten.
Piling up the Wins
After notching another win over Sharapova, Serena Williams moved into 3rd place on the Open Era Grand Slam wins list. Coming into the semifinals, Williams was tied with Steffi Graf at 278 wins. Williams currently only trails Martina Navratilova (306) and Chris Evert (299). In related trivia, Serena Williams is the first woman to reach the finals of all four majors consecutively since Justine Henin did so back in 2006.
Show Court Controversy
Serena Williams and her pal Caroline Wozniacki have both been vocally critical of the scheduling of women's matches during this year's Wimbledon. At the other three majors, women and men get a roughly equal number of matches scheduled on the main show courts, but according to an excellent article by Carl Bialik, this year's Wimbledon is lagging behind in terms of scheduling equality. At the Australian Open, 54% of the matches on the main show courts were women's matches. At the French Open, 49% were women's matches, and at last year's US Open, 52% were women's matches. Through Monday, this year's Wimbledon women's matches accounted for just 38% of all matches on the main show courts. For all the details (and a much more extensive look at the numbers), check out Carl Bialik's full article here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/women-get-equal-pay-but-not-equal-billing-at-wimbledon/