One hundred and twenty six of the world's fittest, strongest and talented women tennis players turned up at the All England Club hoping against hope that a name other than Williams will be engraved on the Venus Rosewater Dish.
Of those, 124 had fallen by the wayside by Thursday and it is left to top seed Safina and Olympic champion Dementieva to try and make the most of their day out in the sunshine.
Dementieva will be the first one to try her luck in stopping the Williams express and as she walked out for her match against Serena, she summed up her task as "I expect a tough match."
The Russian fourth seed has won three of her four most recent meetings against Serena but none of them have been on green turf.
If facing Serena is a difficult enough task, lining up against Venus is an even more formidable one for Safina.
On paper the 23-year-old Russian may be the world number one but she will go into the contest firmly as the underdog.
Five-times champion Venus has won 33 consecutive sets going into Thursday's tussle and so far there has been no indication that run will not be increased to 35 by the end of Thursday afternoon.
If either Russian is to have any chance of ruining the 4th of July celebrations for the sisters, they will have to make sure they bring out their A-games and leave their double-faulting serves behind in the locker room.
Between them the Russians have gifted 64 free points to their opponents in just double faults alone—which tally up to 16 games.
