Serena Williams is set to take on Garbine Muguruza in the female singles final at Wimbledon on Saturday, having the chance of earning her 21st Grand Slam win during her prolific career.
Williams, the WTA world leader, went passed world number 4 Maria Sharapova in the semifinals, whilst Muguruza provided a surprise defeat of Polish player Agnieszka Radwanska, reaching a Grand Slam final for the first time in her career.
The two will face on Saturday starting with 2 p.m. BST (9 a.m. ET) in a match televised by ESPN and streamed online on ESPN Player, with the winner set to take hold of a £1,880,000 prize check, which is seven percent bigger than the one offered last year.
Williams has the historic chance of holding all four Grand Slam titles at the same time if she manages to defeat Muguruza, after winning the U.S. Open, Australian Open and Roland Garros consecutively. The 33 year old, who has an 85 percent win ratio for her overall WTA career, seems to be unstoppable in 2015, having lost only once against world no.2 Petra Kvitova at the semifinals of the Madrid tournament in May.
She enters the match against WTA no. 20 Muguruza as favorite by a large margine. Williams has already defeated the Spaniard this year in the 4th round of the Australian Open, score 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, proceeding to win the tournament after a 6-3, 7-6 win against Sharapova in the final. The world leader also has an outstanding record in Grand Slam finals, winning in 20 of her 24 appearance. The American powerhouse’s last defeat in a Grand Slam Final was at the 2011 US Open, when she lost against Australia’s Samantha Stosur.
However, the 21 year old Muguruza also represents her worst memory at a Grand Slam during her entire career, as the Spanish player beat Williams 6-2, 6-2 at last year’s Roland Garros, representing the heaviest defeat the American player ever suffered on the top stage of tennis.
Williams was also put into difficult spots several times during the tournament, enduring an exhausting match with Victoria Azarenka in the quarter finals and being nearly eliminated by young briton Heather Watson in the third round. On the other hand, Muguruza has also had to work her way to the final, beating four players better seeded than her on the road to the finals – World no 10 Angelique Kerber in round 3, no 5 Caroline Wozniacki in round 4, no 15 Timea Bacsinzky in the quarter-finals and no 13 Agnieszka Radwanska in the semifinal.
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