Serena Exacts Revenge in Full

They'll always have Paris; now they'll always have London, too. Not much is shared between Serena Williams and Justine Henin-Hardenne at the moment, but at least they could both leave Centre Court yesterday knowing that their match had lived up to its billing as more than just a means of winning a place in a Wimbledon final.

It was the eighth time they have met, but only two of those matches will really count when the history books are written. Williams's very conclusive 6-3, 6-2 victory was so much a product of the dramatic last meeting between the pair, at the same stage of the French Open, that an astute promoter could fill any tennis arena in the world with a best-of-three decider.

Yesterday the defending champion was able to exact revenge in full for that distressing afternoon at Roland- Garros last month. For all her emollient words afterwards, she had clearly not forgotten how the crowd's partiality and ignorance had combined with Henin-Hardenne's momentary outbreak of gamesmanship to bring an unbeaten run of 33 grand slam matches to an end in the most unpleasant of circumstances. She reached tomorrow's final with a display of power hitting that appeared to be fuelled by something more potent than her usual competitive spirit.

Serving to take the first set, Williams won the first point of the game with an overhead that contained enough venom to kill a herd of rhinos, and a yell that would have drowned their cries. Holding her serve to take a 2-0 lead in the second set, she chased back under Henin-Hardenne's lob and leapt to smash it away with an exultant whoop.

Not that she was improperly demonstrative. Mostly she kept herself to herself and focused on the job of winning. When she was convinced her opponent's drive had cleared the line at the beginning of the final game, she merely glanced at the umpire and spread her hands before turning quickly away and getting on with the business at hand.

She may not even have noticed that the crowd's affections seemed to be largely with her opponent. The British sympathy for the underdog may have been the cause, and perhaps a preference for finesse over power, but Williams would be justified in feeling that she did not receive due acclaim for putting enough pressure on Henin-Hardenne to force a series of errors on important points. The Belgian's successes, by contrast, were cheered to the echo.

The key to Williams's victory was not just to hit the ball hard, but to hit it deep. The poor length she maintained throughout that convulsive final set in Paris had been more decisive than any number of contentious line calls. This time she had to pin Henin-Hardenne to the baseline and keep her there.

If a serve-volley game was part of her plan, two missed forehand volleys at the net in the opening game seemed to force a rethink. "I'm happy that I was even at the net," she claimed. "That was definitely a start."

There were countless epic baseline rallies, and not all of them ended in Williams's favour. Henin-Hardenne's finesse had its say as she recovered from 0-4 to 3-4 in the first set, breaking her opponent's serve to love twice in succession, concluding the first of those games with a backhand lob so imaginative and so perfectly executed that it could have been framed and sold on the spot.

For the most part, however, it was a question of the American having the courage to go for a full length on almost all her shots and the Belgian trying to find a back-foot strategy that would keep her in the match. Williams's ability to vary the pace and weight of shots eventually had Henin-Hardenne looking bemused.

"She was the better player today, and I have to recognise it and accept it," Henin-Hardenne said. "She was very solid, she served well and returned well, and she was really aggressive in the point. Much better than me. Sometimes she's playing like this and sometimes she's doing a lot of mistakes. It was a good day for her today."

At the end the players exchanged smiles and a handshake, and seemed keen to play down the notion of antipathy. "We don't have any problem between each other," Henin-Hardenne said. "The past is the past. We're both very professional and we have to play a lot of times against each other and it's good if we can get a good relationship. It's like that right now."

"I think she's a good player and a nice girl," Williams responded. "I have no hard feelings with anyone."

Others, particularly those on Centre Court yesterday, will feel that the last chapter of this rivalry has yet to be written.