The last three of Venus Williams’ five opponents so far have all been aged 20 or under and one by one she has swatted them away, proving at 37 that grand slam tennis is not solely the preserve of the Love Island generation.

This time it was the turn of the enormously talented Jelena Ostapenko, who was a month old when Williams made her Wimbledon debut in 1997. The new name in the top reaches of the women’s game, fresh from her victory at the French Open, was unable to cope with the power and consistency of a legend.

Wimbledon 2017: Johanna Konta v Simona Halep in quarter-finals – live! Read more

Williams sealed a 6-3, 7-5 victory with an unanswerable serve and raised a clenched fist in the direction of her box before a familiar wave to the Centre Court crowd. She will face Johanna Konta next.

The five-times champion was playing her 100th match at Wimbledon and now has an enviable 86-14 winning record. This number was of more relevance to the American than any on her birth certificate. Some athletes might take extra pleasure in handing out a beating to another young enough to be their child but Williams did not require extra motivation.

“I’m not thinking about age,” she said. “When you’re out there, all you’re thinking about, all I can control, is myself. In the thick of the match, it’s not in your head. I feel quite capable, to be honest, and powerful. So whatever age that is, as long as I feel like that, then I know I can contend for titles every time.”

She might be the oldest woman in the top 300 but this victory guarantees Williams a return to the top 10 in the rankings when they are released next week and the title would take her to No5.

Williams and Garbiñe Muguruza are the only women in the semi-finals to have tasted grand slam vicotry, which Williams thinks could prove decisive.

“Experience helps, for sure,” she said. “For a lot of the players I’ve played, it’s their first time in the third round or fourth round. So I have an opportunity to bank on experience in having dealt with that sort of pressure before.”

A 111mph ace from the American’s racket with the first hit of the game set the tone. She was soon 2-0 up, breaking Ostapenko at the earliest opportunity. It did not seem the 20-year-old was overawed, merely she could not control her backhand, dumping it into the net.

It was one-way traffic for the remainder of the opening set as Williams dictated points with huge first serves while the Latvian could get only a measly 44% of her own between the lines.

Ostapenko’s backhand was again her undoing in the third game of the second set as an error-strewn game saw her broken to love. It looked like she was cooked but to her credit, the Latvian rallied and broke Williams in the sixth game. She has a few blockbuster shots in the locker and a crushed forehand winner set up two break opportunities. A double fault from Williams gave her a glimmer of hope.

Another lapse of concentration from Ostapenko saw her broken for 6-5 and a wily campaigner like Williams was not going to let it slip from there.

Rather ominously for the other three women left in the tournament, Williams predicted she would get only better.

“I love the challenge,” she said. “I love pressure. It’s not always easy dealing with the pressure. There’s constant pressure. It’s only yourself who can have the answer for that.

“I will love that until the last day you play, you’re still improving. It’s not something that is stagnant. There’s always a reason. I love that.”

Muguruza beats Kuznetsova 6-3, 6-4

Picking when Garbiñe Muguruza is going to produce her best is one of the trickiest tasks in tennis. Blessed with athleticism and power, the Spaniard has all the tools to dominate but she is just as capable of going out in round one of any event as she is winning a major title. But as she showed when she won the French Open last year and when she reached the final here two years ago, she loves a big stage and when she is on, she is a world-beater.

After her 6-3, 6-4 quarter-final win over Svetlana Kuznetsova, she is two wins from a first Wimbledon title. On this form, she is going to take some stopping.

Now 23, Muguruza has bounced back well from a bruising experience at the French Open, when she could not understand why the crowd did not show her enough love as the defending champion, even though she was playing a home player in Kristina Mladenovic. It was a naive reaction but she is in the right place now as she tries to go one better than in 2015, when she was beaten to the title by Serena Williams.

“The year I made the final here, I felt like I was a completely different player,” said the No14 seed, who on Thursday plays Magdalena Rybarikova of Slovakia, the world No87. “Now I maybe feel more solid mentally, going out there knowing what to do. I think it’s with experience and the years.”

The No7 seed Kuznetsova, in the quarter-finals for the first time since 2007, had a break point at 1-1 but the Spaniard saved it and took charge.

Breaking for 3-1, she held the advantage through the rest of the set. One break, in the fifth game, was enough to give her the second set and with it a place in the semi-finals for the second time in three years. “I felt very good when I won the major,” she said. “I think I’m on a similar path. Let’s say like that.”

Rybarikova had never been past the third round of a grand slam event before this week but in her first quarter-final the 28-year-old completely dismantled the big game of the American Coco Vandeweghe to win 6-3, 6-3.

The match began on Court No1 and after a three-hour break for rain, it resumed on Centre Court, a luxury not afforded to Novak Djokovic the previous evening. From 6-3, 2-2 on the resumption, Rybarikova held her nerve to reach the last four. Simon Cambers

Novak Djokovic complains of hole on Centre Court baseline after beating Mannarino Read more