London: Belinda Bencic has staged the mother of all shows at Wimbledon this fortnight. It’s been running for 10 hours and nine minutes so far; point precise groundstrokes and steely determination.The back story first. Bencic gave birth to her daughter Bella in April 2024 and in late October started with lower-level tournaments, two W75s and a WTA125. It wasn’t until January that she played her first Tour-level match, ranked 487 in the world. Three outings later, she won her first title as a mother, a WTA500 in Abu Dhabi. Already the comeback story of the year. After putting away an overhead to close the match, the former world No.4 dropped her racket on Centre Court, looking skyward in disbelief. She had just knocked out the seventh seed 18-year-old Mirra Andreeva in the last-eight of the Church Road major, and in that moment it appeared like everything she had been through these last months flitted before her.
Bencic, 28, ranked 35, came through 7-6 (3), 7-6 (2) in two hours and seven minutes to make her first Wimbledon semifinals. It’s only the second time she’s done it in a Grand Slam. The Swiss’ first major semifinal – a loss to Bianca Andreescu at the 2019 US Open – was five years and 309 days ago, making her run to the last four at The Championships the fifth-longest gap between Grand Slam semifinals in the Open Era. “This is crazy, unbelievable, I’m speechless,” Bencic said after putting out Andreeva. “I’m proud of myself, I never said this much to myself before Bella, but now I tell myself this every day.” Bencic’s win on Wednesday was carefully crafted, she won only 10 points more than Andreeva in the total haul. The teenager was testing her with underspin, mixing it up cleverly to change the course of rallies, but Bencic used her experience to come through in the tiebreaks. In the second set, Andreeva was broken after a fairly long game that included two deuces. Just when it looked like Bencic would serve out the match, the Russian struck to level at 5-5. Bencic will play Iga Swiatek in the second semifinals on Thursday. The Pole leads the head-to-head 3-1. Their last meeting was in the fourth round of Wimbledon in 2023, which the world No.4 won in three tight sets. Meanwhile, Swiatek’s love-hate relationship with grass is leaning on the enemies-to-friends trope. Considering the Pole’s only Grand Slam success in the juniors came at Wimbledon in 2018, she has struggled to prepare in earnest for the tournament given her success at Roland Garros each year and the short gap between the two Slams. While Swiatek has won four titles (2020, ‘22, ‘23, ‘24) in Roland Garros, her previous best effort at Wimbledon is a quarterfinal in 2023. This year, following her loss in the semi-finals in Paris, she has worked doubly hard, making the final in Bad Homburg. The work reflected in her performance on Court No.1 where she scored a 6-2, 7-5 win over the 19th seed Liudmila Samsonova in the quarters.Meanwhile in the boys’ doubles, Bangalore’s Krish Tyagi and South African Connor Doig beat the sixth seeds Italy’s Pierluigi Basile and Bulgaria’s Alexander Vasilev 6-3, 3-6, 10-7 to make the quarters.
