Both Wimbledon finalists will be fighting their emotions in what should be a momentous duel, with the American well placed for a 24th slam

When Sabine Lisicki lost the final at Wimbledon to Marion Bartoli in 2013, she could not control the flow of tears that showed her desolation. Within 41 days Bartoli had retired, at only 28, after losing to Simona Halep in Cincinnati, unable to stand the aggregated pain of a long career, becoming the first Wimbledon champion not to defend her title since the 1969 winner, Ann Jones.

The antagonists in the final six years ago handled the aftermath in their own ways. Bartoli contemplated a comeback, thought better of it and found a home in the commentary box, while “Boom Boom” Lisicki, the fastest server in the game between 2014 and 2016 at 130mph, never quite got back the magic. At the Australian Open this year, and only 29, she went out in the first round of qualifying, for the third time on the spin at a slam.

Wimbledon 2019: Halep ‘desperate’ for title after semi-final win over Svitolina Read more

This is a deceptively tough sport, as the finalists on Saturday know too well. Halep began to flower in the years that followed her defeat of Bartoli, to the point where she won the French Open last year and has reigned as No 1 in the world; Williams’s story is familiar to all, a tale of alternating glory and struggle that would seem to have at least a chapter or two left.

What they both share is a lingering fight with their emotions. Until Halep calmed her outer shell over the past couple of years, she was among the most volatile of competitors on the WTA Tour. Williams, as she admitted on Thursday after her best performance of the tournament – a 59-minute demolition of Barbora Strycova – cannot be sure from day to day how she will handle the pressures and expectations of her calling, even though she is by overwhelming consensus the finest player of her era.

Privately, she would agree with that. Good manners prevent her from saying so in public – and that brings its own baggage. When Williams was in place to record a calendar slam in the latter stages of the 2015 US Open, her emotions ran wild and she collapsed in a lachrymose cloud not dissimilar to the one that enveloped Lisicki, losing in the semi-finals to the Italian doubles artist Roberta Vinci.

And last September, again the red mist came down across her furious and disbelieving eyes as she railed against the perceived injustice heaped on her by the chair umpire Carlos Ramos and lost in the most theatrical exit. This week, in an article in Harper’s Bazaar, she reached out to her Flushing Meadows conqueror, Naomi Osaka, in a reprise of her case against Ramos, blaming the media for the furore.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Simona Halep in practice before her first Wimbledon final. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images

Now she is returned to another statistical hell – or heaven, if she wins: victory on Saturday would give Williams her eighth Wimbledon singles title and her 24th major, matching the Australian Margaret Court for the most slams in the history of the sport. That is some achievement – yet Williams again is trying to downplay its significance, just as she did ahead of her match against Vinci four years ago.

She alternates between handling the responsibilities and rewards of greatness and being consumed by them. She should be comforted, though, by the evidence of her progress to the final, which contained only one glaring blip, when she fell over the line in three sets against Alison Riske. Her return to form in the semi-finals against Strycova was astonishing.

It could come down to a factor as obvious as the serve – and Serena, predictably, has a considerable edge here. No one in the draw has hit more than her 45 aces but, for someone who red-lines her power at around 120mph, she has logged surprisingly few double-faults: 11, in fact, which is a risk-reward ratio of about four to one.

Halep, however, is tied for 26 on the list with a clutch of others who have fallen, including Coco Gauff, who went out in the fourth round, and Belinda Bencic, a round earlier. But her risk-reward return is way poorer than Williams’s: nine aces, 12 double-faults.

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The Romanian is no slouch with racket in hand, of course, but her fastest serve of the fortnight is 110mph – fully 12 miles an hour slower than the booming deliveries of her opponent.

Once that ball is in play, the return is vital and, if it is to be of any quality coming back at the American, Halep has to be brave, taking it on the rise occasionally, or making sure she delivers a heavy and precise enough blow from deep to keep the exchange alive. Only then is parity possible.

She is 15th on the tournament leaderboard for getting her return back, with 83%, and that is healthy. And here is the shock of the numbers: Williams lies tied for 66th in returns with 283 from 383, or 74%. That is exactly a hundred balls she has failed to get back in play when receiving and Halep will have taken that into account, no doubt.

After all that, it will be a surprise – not on the scale of her defeat by Vinci in New York – if Williams does not stand in the middle of Centre Court as the freshly crowned queen of Wimbledon, and the game itself.