Elena Dementieva's route to a second successive Wimbledon semi-final has been entirely devoid of drama. She will face Serena Williams having played the minimum 10 sets in her five matches. The fifth seed has lost only 20 games in the entire tournament; only Venus Williams has conceded fewer.
The unseeded Francesca Schiavone was the latest to offer token resistance to the Russian, wilting 6-2, 6-2 in the afternoon heat on a muted Court One.
The nerves of the Italian can take some of the blame for this facile, emotionless procession – broken in her opening two service games the world No43 could have rewritten the script if she had taken any of the seven break points offered her by Dementieva in her second and third service games.
Instead the 27-year-old Muscovite came back from 0-40 twice and clawed back to deuce in the fifth to take a 5-0 lead and rob the match of any drama. The world No4 committed nine double faults but Schiavone could break only once and having been broken herself in the fourth game of the second set the Italian seemed to surrender to her opponent's aggressive style and Dementieva sealed victory on her first match point.
Defeated by Venus Williams in last year's semi-finals, the Russian conceded that a more severe test would have been useful ahead of her match with the younger Williams, who she has beaten three times in their previous eight meetings: 'I wish I had a little bit more fight before this round. But we'll see if I'm going to be ready for this one. I'm sure it is going to be a fight for every point, every game, you know. So I'm not expecting anything. I don't expect an easy match.'