TENNIS/Wimbledon championships: Richard Williams, father of Serena and Venus, declared yesterday tennis should never be the number one thing in their lives. It should respectably sit where it belongs in third place after God and family.

While Serena might have taken the paternal advice too literally, playing like it was at best the third most important thing to her and ending up with an early ticket out of London, the performance from Venus yesterday suggested papa can keep his musings to himself.

He did, however, add that Venus would be the number one player in the world again and that she will win Wimbledon.

Given that the 25-year-old came into this year's tournament as the 14th seed, yesterday's opponent Mary Pierce, as 12th seed, was technically the favourite for the match.

While many couldn't bring themselves to quite see it that way despite Pierce making an extravagant claim on the French Open title before crashing and burning in the one-sided final against Justine Henin-Hardenne, neither did they expect the fury Williams would visit upon her in the first set.

Pierce at 30 years old is in the twilight of her career but as a robust, hard-punching player who has worked hard to maintain her fitness levels, she had demonstrated better form than Williams coming into the competition.

No matter.

Williams, with all the evangelical zeal of an Old Testament prophet, decided to put the French player to the sword as quickly as possible. For 21 minutes the former champion cut, thrust and laid waste anything Pierce threw back.

The older player was outrun and outmuscled, her hard groundstokes returned with stinging precision.

The games kept clocking up too, one to six they stacked up with no reply at all from Pierce. It required the second game of the second set for the Williams tempest to blow itself out, Pierce finally holding serve to draw level 1-1, the first set but a 6-0 blur.

"I'm just really blessed to be as tall as I am and to be able to move. I don't know how that happened. That's a good blessing. I'm always working hard. I can't do anything else," said Williams.

Whether the first set came all too easy is difficult to say but as the airs around Centre Court settled, Pierce found herself back in the match, going ball for ball with her big-hitting opponent. While in the first set her serve was marmalised, Williams could not threaten it in the second.

Adjusting to the pace, both players held serve to 6-6, sending the match into what transpired to be a thrilling tiebreak.

With never more than one point between the two, Williams finally got the opportunity.

At 11-10, Pierce attempted to bury a deep shot into the backcourt. As it fell inches long, the American raised her arms as much in relief as triumph. At that point she knew she would be facing the reigning champion and world number two, Maria Sharapova, in the semi-final.

But the Williams attitude, despite the sisters now being widely viewed as eminently beatable, is to bring on the next opponent whoever it may be.

As she expressed it yesterday, Venus's respect for Sharapova's win over Serena in last year's final is at best grudging.

"She (Serena) just didn't play well. Maria did play very well and it takes a lot to win a Wimbledon final. But Serena wasn't able to put up a lot of resistance that day. I think if she could have played 10 to 15 per cent better, I think that probably would have been a different story," said Venus.

Somebody asked if her father tended to imagine things; the question could have equally been applied to the daughter. But the family have always seen things through their own peculiar prism and have an engaging, effortless way of minimising the achievements of opponents.

Sharapova, one of the few players to match Williams physically, will store the comment in her locker until tomorrow. The Russian teenager may have the story-book looks of a princess but she is also an ice queen.

While 23-year-old eighth seed Nadia Petrova stubbornly went toe to toe with Sharapova for the first set and gave her only one service-break opportunity, which she could not take, Sharapova then snatched it on the tiebreak.

A creak then appeared on the Petrova service game in the second game of the second set and again Sharapova took it, breaking for 2-0.

Afterwards her language was gamely aggressive. "She (Venus) has a very big game, you know, is a great fighter," said Sharapova. "So every time we play we always have tough matches. Just have to go out and battle it out and see who can come out and win the fight."

Sharapova has reached the quarter-finals or better in all 10 events she has played this year and reached the semi-finals of the Australian for the first time. More importantly, she held her grass title at Birmingham before Wimbledon, beating Jelena Jankovic in the final. Compared to Williams's sporadic run of second, third and fourth- round defeats, it is the Russian who has the proven consistency.

After her match, Sharapova agreed with Richard Williams's philosophy. "I don't think tennis is my life - it's my career," she said.

On Venus becoming Wimbledon champion, well, she will give her answer tomorrow.