The Williams sisters have won six of the last eight Wimbledon titles, defending champion Venus having taken four of those crowns. This weekend is going to another win for the sisters as both won their semi-finals in style against Elena Dementieva and Zheng Jie. But what happened to the other top-seeded women in this prestigious tournament?

With Justine Henin now retired, you would have thought every top player would have been up for the challenge of winning the grass-court tournament. The thing about grass, though, is that it is a great leveller amongst the players. With only three or four tournaments a year played on the surface, many of the top players cannot play well on it or find it difficult to adjust from the slow red clay to the faster green stuff.

Looking at some of the top seeds, we see that world No.1 Ana Ivanovic was probably still mentally jaded from winning her first Grand Slam at Roland Garros and her new-found fame at the very top of the WTA rankings. To be fair, she fell to a quality player in Zheng. who went on to reach the semis.

Jelena Jankovic played a couple of good matches but I think she was lucky to defeat Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark in the third round, so losing to grass-court specialist Tamarine Tansurgarn was no surprise. And I think injury played a part in the Serbian’s downfall. I never think Svetlana Kuznetsova is comfortable on grass and her defeat to new Polish sensation Agnieska Radwanska again came as no surprise to me.

I think the Polish girl will be ranked inside the top five by the time Wimbledon comes around next year and I predict that Agnieska can actually go on to win the tournament - just as she did at junior level.

As for Maria Sharapova, well I think she lost a lot of confidence in her defeat to Dinara Safina in the French Open and it seems her shoulder is still giving her problems. Alla Kudrysteva is a good young Russian player and nearly knocked out Venus Williams in last year’s tournament, so again she had a certain amount of pedigree. But her win over Sharapova was still a huge surprise. 

So semi-final appearances from the Williams sisters and the in-form Dementieva were hardly shocks and only Zheng defied the odds. But everyone on the WTA tour knows how dangerous the diminutive Chinese player can be when fit. It’s great to see shocks in the ladies game, as so often happens in men’s matches. For too long, the top few on the WTA have dominated the tour but now the players are more confident in playing top seeds.

The women’s game has certainly gained considerable depth with a lot of new youngsters entering the tour over the past two years. These girls are desperate for success, are good all-around athletes and give their peers much less respect than previously. It is an exciting time for the women’s game and although this year’s Wimbledon did feature a large number of upsets, not many fans of rival players would have bet against an all-Williams final before this year’s Championship began.