It could be considered bad timing to reveal your secret weapon before a semi-final match, but a highly confident Venus Williams did so yesterday and it had the effect only of making it feel even more likely that she will retain her Wimbledon crown.

The five-times champion took just over an hour to destroy Agnieszka Radwanska, of Poland. Her 6-1, 6-2 victory was, she agreed, aggressive, but she argued that she does apply intellect as well.

“I do have strategy,” the American said. “Maybe it doesn't look like it, but I do. I think that's my secret weapon, that it doesn't look like I'm thinking, but I am.”

She will face Dinara Safina in her semi-final and perhaps was applying a bit of strategy when she said that grand-slam titles mean more than heading the rankings. Safina, of course, is the top seed and ranked No 1 in the world in spite of the fact that she has never won a grand-slam event.

Technically Williams will, as the No 3 seed, be the underdog tomorrow, but the notion is almost laughable.

“She has the top ranking, but I have more experience in this tournament and more success,” Williams said. “You know, I've been playing a little longer.” When she adds casually that “this is my favourite slam”, as if she was chatting about chocolate bars, you can only imagine how Safina, who is still trying to discover which her favourite might be, must feel.

For her second successive match, Safina recovered from the loss of the first set to progress. Her 6-7, 6-4, 6-1 defeat of Sabine Lisicki, of Germany, was littered with errors - she served 15 double faults - as well as some highly fluid movement. “Sometimes even I don't know what I'm doing with my serve,” Safina said.

She said that she wants to enjoy the contest against Venus, but the Russian will have to iron out more than a few wrinkles if she is to avoid relative humiliation and keep the Williams sisters apart in the final. Serena, who admitted she uses some of her trophies as make-up brush-holders, won her quarter-final against Victoria Azarenka and in so doing exacted revenge for the defeat inflicted by the Belarussian this year in Miami.

Azarenka put Serena's serve under pressure in the second set and briefly threatened to cause the No 2 seed problems when she managed to break it, but Serena bit back sharply.

She also bit back when questioned about whether fans get value for money from such straightforward women's matches. “You get to see these female players playing their best tennis, not losing a set,” Serena said. “I think that's tremendous.”

Elena Dementieva, who also has a curious tendency to serve too many double faults given her seeding, will be Serena's semi-final opponent after the Russian's 6-2, 6-2 defeat of Francesca Schiavone, of Italy, who was playing in her first Wimbledon quarter-final.

Dementieva, the No 4 seed, is something of a quarter-finals specialist, having reached the semi-final stage in every grand-slam tournament, including last year's Wimbledon. She has lost only 20 games in reaching the last four this time, although that is not the best preparation for facing a Williams sister.

“I wish I had a little bit more of a fight before this round,” Dementieva, who won an Olympic gold medal last year, said. “It's going to be a fight for every point, every game.”

Form points to another all-Williams final, but one other possibility is an all-Russian affair that would at least reflect the dominance of Eastern European players in the tournament.

More surprisingly, the semi-final line-up is dominated by women who have been coached by a parent. Indeed, just as Richard Williams has coached two of his offspring to become No 1 seeds, so Rauza Islanova, Safina's mother, has coached both her daughter and Marat Safin, her son, to the world No 1 spot.

Quarter-finals

(1) D Safina (Russ) v (3) V Williams (US)
(4) E Dementieva (Russ) v (2) S Williams (US)