Henin next in line for the Venus juggernaut

Venus Williams' game is just not tennis. When she takes a stride forward and thrashes a return, double-handed off a racket resting on her leading limb, to the very point of the boundary, it is more cricket. Or baseball perhaps, on the rare careless points she skies it long.

Even with one leg strapped yesterday, the reigning champion and world No 1 dispatched Elena Likhovtseva, 6-2, 6-0 in 47 minutes to book herself a third consecutive semi-final. And as she acknowledged the crowd afterwards, twirling like a doll on a music box, with smile firmly fixed, it was hard to see how anyone will beat her at her own game here. Unless her injury deteriorates – she is suffering from tendinitis in the right knee – or her form dips drastically enough to allow an on-form thinker to pick her apart, a third successive title beckons.

The identity of that thinker might be Justine Henin, who beat Monica Seles yesterday, 7-5, 7-6 and plays Venus in tomorrow's semis in a repeat of last year's final. Or Jennifer Capriati, the brains-brawn hybrid who yesterday progressed past Eleni Daniilidou, 6-1, 3-6, 6-1, to today's belated bottom-half quarter-finals. But it will take a special blend of guile and guts to halt Williams in full flow.

One alternative scenario sees Venus meet sister Serena in the final, as the seedings intend. And then who knows. Take away the bandage that Venus insisted yesterday is for prevention, not cure, and it is easy to imagine you would find the wiring of a bionic woman. And when that machine meets another grafted from the same ingredients, one of them is prone to rust with the sibling emotion that is absent whenever else they adorn the court.

"I don't think [Likhovtseva] gave me a lot of errors today," Venus said in a clinical assessment of yesterday's win. "I think I had to produce most of the shots and put a lot of pressure on her." Asked for a definition of a "perfect game", an all-round pinnacle of a performance that is her stated aim one day, she added: "[That is] when all the balls you hit go where you want them to go and they all fall in. I don't think it's going to happen that often." She had earlier said: "I realise I might never be perfect." Note the use of the word "might".

For several minutes yesterday, nine or 10 of them at most, it seemed as though Williams might be given a match. The score stood at 2-2 in the first set. Likhovtseva should have cut her losses and run. The Russian took 13 points in total thereafter, and no more games. Thunderous passing, solid volleys, and cracking backhands sailed past her down the line and knocked her out. Even the net cord worked in the champion's favour, four times braving the sting of Williams' shots to cushion the ball and plop it over for a point with Likhovtseva left stranded.

It was rarely pretty but it was brutally effective, as the statistics for Venus's tournament so far testify. She has been on court for four hours and 40 minutes in total over five matches. If she continues in that vein to the title then the £486,000 winner's cheque will equate to £75,000 for each hour of work. She has served 18 aces at up to 119mph and has conceded just one double-fault on average per match. An aggregate 80 per cent of first-serve points have been won.

The rewards for her labours are plain to see, in terms of status and finance at least. She has amassed a fortune of tens of millions of dollars, and has become one of the icons of American sport. She could go anywhere, do anything, hammer her treasured credit card to the hilt. But rewarding herself away from the court, in any truly meaningful way, is difficult.

"I should find a way," she replied, asked how she pays herself for a job well done. In a cocooned world where going out becomes ever harder, she has even had to endure a hoaxer turning up at her house in London before the tournament, claiming he was a drugs tester in a failed attempt to gain access. Venus told the guard at the gate to say she had emigrated to Siberia. Instead the chancer in search of a sample could have been dismissed with three words. Robots don't urinate.