In the first of two Australian Open women’s semifinals, the tennis world received yet another illustration of the difference between a great champion and a talented but disappointing pretender to the throne. Serena Williams possesses abundant talent, but the decorated performer defeated Elena Dementieva on Thursday in Rod Laver Arena because she was stronger between the ears. The 6-3, 6-4 win not only propelled the younger Williams sister into another Grand Slam final; it also reminded followers of the WTA Tour why the highly-skilled Dementieva has never claimed a major title.

One could say that Serena’s 10 aces were a big factor in this match. An observer could also tout Serena’s substantial advantage in terms of first-serve points won (78 percent to Dementieva’s 52 percent). Tennis pundits could also point to Serena’s 27 winners, compared to the more timid Dementieva’s total of 18. Those three stats, to a certain extent, influenced the progression of this slugfest.

Yet, as meaningful as numbers can be, they so often fail to tell the real story, especially in a main-event showdown when pressure creates the central narrative and exposes two competitors for what they really are.

Simply stated, Serena was revealed as the dominant force in her sport, while Dementieva was left to bear the humiliation of another weak-minded performance in the latter stages of a slam. One only had to look at a few key sequences to understand these central tennis truths.

In an unspectacular but appreciably solid first set, Serena–on serve at 4-3–broke Dementieva by doing what champions always do in the business end of a set: ramping up the intensity to make the one big push for a break. After hitting with moderate pace in the first seven games of a cautiously played match, Serena upped the ante in the eighth game. By adding a little extra velocity to her groundstrokes, she caught her Russian opponent off guard. After trailing 40-15 in that game, Serena thoroughly dominated four straight points to gain a 5-3 advantage. Armed with both a scoreboard cushion and surging self-belief, Serena unsurprisingly served out the set to draw first blood. This was the first announcement of the supremacy of the three-time Australian Open champion.

The second set, in marked contrast to the first, didn’t elevate Serena so much as it stripped Dementieva of her stature and left the frail Russian to contemplate why another Grand Slam journey ended without a trophy.

Dementieva bolted to a 3-0 lead in the set, as Serena suffered a brief but costly loss of concentration on her first service game at 0-1. Three games do not make a set, however, and Dementieva–who has been known to squander leads in the second week of a major tournament–had to show that she could steady her nerves and send the match to a third set.

Ever so clearly, the No. 4 seed proved that she wasn’t up to the challenge.

The turning point of this match was, quite remarkably, a play that–at the time–signaled a potential downturn in Serena’s fortunes. Serving at 3-1 in the second set, Dementieva saved a break point by hitting a screaming crosscourt forehand. Lunging in vain for the shot, Serena slipped and fell. Upon getting up, the American walked around gingerly, as though she was testing her footwork and movement. While Williams wasn’t injured–not to a considerable extent, at any rate–it’s never easy for a player to suffer a hard fall, because that kind of episode forces a necessarily body-conscious athlete to question his or her ability to perform, if but for a brief while. When Serena Williams fell, Elena Dementieva simply needed to play high-margin, percentage-based tennis in order to maintain her second-set advantage.

Instead, the woman who has been a top 10 mainstay on the WTA Tour sealed her own fate by showing the nerves that have haunted her throughout her career.

Seeing her opponent fall, Dementieva–who has worked so hard to improve her serve in recent months–committed not one, but two double faults to gift-wrap a break to Williams and put the second set on serve. As disastrous as that event was, it would happen again a few minutes later, with predictably firm and final consequences.

Having just broken Serena to get back to 4-all, Dementieva showed signs of shaking off the nerves that caused her to squander the three-game advantage she had attained. Just when the Russian began to relax, however, the paralyzing problems that sabotaged her serve would make a most untimely reappearance in an indoor arena’s undisturbed conditions.

In this 4-all game, Dementieva double faulted two more times–the second time at 30-all–to hand Serena a break chance. On that 30-40 point, a spectacular rally ended with Williams drilling a backhand approach to Dementieva’s forehand corner. The No. 2 seed made a great play to secure a decisive break of serve, but that break couldn’t have happened without the generosity of Dementieva.

To the astonishment of absolutely no one–be it inside the arena or in the worldwide TV audience watching the match–Serena threw down the hammer at 5-4, serving out the match with conviction and reminding her competitors who rules the roost in women’s tennis.

Saturday night, Serena Williams–on the strength of this victory–will compete for a fourth title Down Under, and a 10th slam championship overall. Such a reality is in many ways the product of a great champion’s superior will. With that having been acknowledged, a great player’s perseverance is usually accompanied by an inferior opponent’s inability to breathe in the thick air of pressure. Serena’s big-point serves and groundstrokes won her this match, but Dementieva’s 8 double faults also lost it. Fans of the Williams sisters will celebrate Serena’s virtues, while Russian tennis fans will lament Dementieva’s failings.

What does this all mean? Nothing more than the fact that a true champion and a flawed pretender were exposed in broad daylight when a ticket to a Grand Slam final was up for grabs.

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