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Eighth seed Venus Williams will be confident of advancing to the semi-finals of Wimbledon when she takes on surprise packet Yaroslava Shvedova. Join The Roar for live scores from 10pm (AEST).
While the credentials of Williams are well known, Shvedova is something of an unknown quantity who was only just ranked inside the top 100 before Wimbledon started and was in some shocking form, losing matches left, right and centre.
It got to the point where Shvedova couldn’t even qualify for a tournament in Eastbourne and given she has been bundled out of the first round at Wimbledon five times it was not expected that she was going to make any sort of run.
However, the 28-year-old Kazakh has played superb tennis since the third grand slam of the year started and only dropped a single set, causing plenty of upsets along the way.
That run includes knocking out a pair of seeded players.
After a dominant straight sets win over Julia Georges in the first round, she was taken all the way to three sets against Elina Svitolina before knocking over both Sabine Lisicki and Lucie Safarova in straight sets.
What has been impressive for Shvedova is how accurate she has generally been on first serve, and her composure when able to rack up a break point, completing at over 50 per cent throughout the tournament.
Venus Williams on the other hand has just struggled a little to mark authority, although she was strong in the fourth round and showed marked signs of a change in her play style.
That match was against Carla Suarez Navarro as she won 7-6, 6-4, but considering it followed three-set wins over Maria Sakkari and Darya Kasatkina who took the third set all the way to 10-8 means there is a long way to go for her to be considered in-form.
The pair have never faced off before this meeting and the winner will take on either fourth seed Angelique Kerber or fifth seed Simona Halep in the semi-finals.
Prediction
Given how Shvedova has been playing throughout the tournament, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to see her putting up a really strong fight, but the class of Williams should get the job done.
Williams in three sets.
Be sure to join The Roar for live scores of this quarter-final match on court No.1 at Wimbledon from 10pm (AEST) and be sure to get involved by leaving your own comments below.
Follow Scott on Twitter @sk_pryde