Serena shines,stars crash

Defending champion Serena Williams avoided the wave of upsets as Venus lost to unseeded Pironkova.

Wimbledon is guaranteed a new Grand Slam finalist in the womens singles after Tsvetana Pironkova and Vera Zvonareva caused huge upsets on Tuesday to set up an unlikely last-four clash.

First Bulgarias 82nd-ranked Pironkova inflicted a heaviest ever Wimbledon defeat on five-times champion Venus Williams,winning 6-2 6-3 in front of a stunned Court One crowd,then Zvonareva trashed Kim Clijsters hopes of a dream return. Russian Zvonareva stormed back to win 3-6 6-4 6-2 as former world number one Clijsters,back at the All England Club for the first time since quitting the sport in 2006 to start a family,crumbled on Centre Court.

Defending champion Serena Williams avoided the wave of upsets,beating Chinas Li Na 7-5 6-3 and moving closer to her fourth Wimbledon title and 13th Grand Slam championship. The top-seeded Serena had 11 aces to take her tournament total to 73,breaking the record of 72 she set last year. She had 21 winners and just six unforced errors.

Serenas semi-final opponent is 62nd-ranked Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic,who saved five match points before beating Estonian Kaia Kanepi 4-6 7-6 8 8-6.

Pironkova,eight years younger than the 30-year-old Venus,is the first Bulgarian woman to reach a Grand Slam semi-final in the modern era. Having never been beyond the second round of a Grand Slam tournament before this years Wimbledon,Pironkova said she had arrived hoping just to win a couple of matches but now stands one match away from a dream final.

If I have to be honest,coming here,I really just wanted to play a good game,to maybe win one or two rounds. But a semi-final looked to me very far away.

Zvonareva has tasted a semi-final before having reached the last four in Australia in 2009 but the 25-year-old,one of the less celebrated of the Russian brigade,had lost all five previous matches against Clijsters but chose a perfect moment to snap that run.

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Apart from a lapse from 3-3 in the first set she was the better player,striking fierce,flat groundstrokes into the corners to keep her Belgian opponent on the defensive.

Clijsters got lucky with two netcords as she broke back at 3-5 in the second set but Zvonareva was gifted the second set in the next game when Clijsters limply double-faulted. She continued to break down in the rallies and slipped 5-2 behind in the decider. Zvonareva broke the Clijsters serve again to claim victory when the Belgian netted a forehand her 36th unforced error of a match she would prefer to forget.