Preview of Wimbledon 2012 women's singles final: Serena Williams vs. Agnieszka Radwanska
Serena Williams aced her way into her seventh Wimbledon final and will face Agnieszka Radwanska, a debutante at that stage of a Grand Slam. Will the abundance of Serena's experience and her intimidating serve prevail or will Agnieszka's craftiness produce the first Polish Grand Slam champion. Our guest poster Omair will look at the numbers behind their Wimbledon 2012 performance and make a statistical prediction. Enjoy!

Serena Williams will walk onto Centre Court knowing that she is into her seventh Wimbledon final and has gone 4-2 in the prior six, with the losses coming at the hands of Maria Sharapova (2004) and Venus Williams (2008), in fact only three players have been able to beat Serena in her prior 17 major final appearances (Venus – twice, Sharapova, and Samantha Stosur). Serena will no doubt be the favorite and will be highly motivated to win her fifth Venus Rosewater Dish and her first Grand Slam title in two years (her last coming here at Wimbledon in 2010).
Radwanska walks onto Centre Court knowing that she has a shot at the top spot and that she can become the first ever Polish player to win a Grand Slam and join the elite club of 13 players who have won a major at both junior and senior levels.
The pair has met twice, both meetings coming in 2008. Surprisingly, Serena was ranked sixth then as well and both went in favor of Serena in straight sets, one of those wins was in the quarters of Wimbledon.
Let us have a look at the performance of the players so far at Wimbledon 2012.

* I have used the average aces, double faults, winners and unforced errors hit by the player per match.
The stats are clearly in favor of the sixth-seeded American, the four-time Wimbledon champion. Serena has won a whopping 80% of her first serves, while Radwanska has been able to win just 68%. Serena has also won 10% more points on her second serve, compared to her title match opponent. Serena lost just one point on her first serve in the first set of her semifinal match against Victoria Azarenka, one of the best returners on the Tour, and lost a total of four points on serve in that set. Read more »
Acerena, that's how we can call Serena Williams from now on. In today's Wimbledon semifinal victory, the American fired 24 aces, the 24th in style, on the match point, that is actually 4×6 one whole set, bettering her personal best of 23 achieved only three rounds ago against Zheng Jie. Serena's total number of aces at Wimbledon 2012 up to the final is 85, while second-ranked in that department is quarterfinalist Sabine Lisicki with 35. Can Williams' serving impress you more? You bet she can! Today against world No.2 Victoria Azarenka, Williams hit those 24 aces without making a single double fault! I don't like using multiple exclamation marks, but I feel like using five at this point.
Moreover, the day before the semifinal, Acerena played two doubles matches alongside sister Venus, won them both to reach the quarterfinal, and today shortly after her win in singles, Acerena got back to the court and celebrated yet another victory with Venus, reaching the Wimbledon doubles semifinal where they will face top seeds Liezer Huber and Lisa Raymond. Every time the Williams sisters play doubles at Wimbledon, one of them wins the singles title. That tradition can very well be continued as Serena takes on first-time Grand Slam finalist Agnieszka Radwanska in the title match.





It didn't seem likely based on the first set and the beginning of the second, but Sabine Lisicki woke up all the lulled tennis fans who are watching Wimbledon at night to produce a thriller against Angelique Kerber and even though it was undecided until the very end, eventually it was the higher-ranked Kerber advancing to the semis, preventing Lisicki from reaching her second straight Wimbledon semifinal.


