Olivier Hoslet / EPA

After the first week at Wimbledon Venus Williams found her form, and her superb play in the second week was the key to her capturing a fourth title at the grasscourt major, writes Tracy Austin of MSNBC.com. 

Too much game for Bartoli
The key factor in deciding the 2007 final is that Venus is just better in all facets of the game than Bartoli. But give a lot of credit to the Frenchwoman -- she had never played seven matches at a tournament before, came up with the match of her life in beating world No. 1 Justine Henin in the semifinals, and she had so many more activities, such as press responsibilities, than she is used to that Wimbledon became physically and mentally draining on her.

Venus certainly wasn’t running away with the match when they were at 4-all in the first set. But she stepped it up a gear and that made a difference. Venus is a sensational offensive player with her big serve and massive groundstrokes and that does at times make us forget she has a pretty good defensive game. She certainly tracked down a lot of Bartoli’s balls, which caused the Frenchwoman to over hit on shots.

Bartoli told us how tough it is against Venus when after the match she said, "(Venus) reached some balls like I never see one person reach some ball like that on a tennis court, and she would even hit it harder back to me." That's what the Frenchwoman was looking at all match. That's what Sharapova, Kuznetsova, and Ivanovic were looking at. Not a pretty sight for any of them.

Where does Bartoli go from here? Her Wimbledon showing will place her very near the top 10 at No. 11 so she is close to being one of the elite. But she does need to find a consistency with her game. It’s unlikely that she’s going to constantly pull out performances like she did against Henin, but she should be going past the first couple of rounds at tournaments on a regular basis. In the big picture, however, I don’t believe that she will one day win a major.

Looking towards the Big Apple
Venus will revel in this sensational championship she's won, but when things settle down, she’ll be focusing on the U.S. Open in New York later this summer, a major she captured in 2001 and 2000. It would be good for her to play two or three tournaments in the eight weeks between Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.

As her last few matches in London showed, there’s nothing glaringly out of sorts with her game at the moment, she just has to concentrate on her execution. She knows when she struggles that the second serve and the forehand go off, but she can’t practice that because it’s about execution at the moment.

Venus would serve herself well if she could get into the top-16 seeds for the U.S. Open so she could avoid having to meet players like Sharapova in the fourth round. After winning the Wimbledon title her ranking should go up to No. 17.

Does she have a chance to win the U.S. Open? Of course she does for if there is one thing Venus has shown in her career it's that she should never be counted out at a major. She says she's a big-match player, and she has the results to back up that assertion.

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