THE ball sailed long and the racket flew out of her hands.
And for a few amazing seconds, Venus Williams genuinely did not know what to do with herself.
She twirled like a princess. She screamed like a banshee.
She put her head in her hands, fell down and beat the court with both fists, jumped up and leapt and waved and blew kisses.
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The girl might be gone 36 but this feeling plainly never gets old.
Tomorrow morning UK time, she meets little sister Serena, 35, in a Grand Slam final for the ninth time — but it will be her first since Wimbledon 2009 and her first here since 2003.
Both hailed the prospect as a dream come true. Both wish the other nothing but the best.
Yet you know both will go out there and knock seven bells out of the person they love most on the planet.
Venus, who has lost six of the previous eight family finals on the biggest stages, said: “To win this final, after waiting so long, would be beautiful.
“I have to earn it, though, it’s not a given. I’m going to do what I can to earn it. I’m already thinking, ‘What do I have to DO to earn it?’
“When I’m playing on the court with her, I think I’m playing, like, the best competitor in the game.
“Not that I think I’m chump change either, you know. I can compete against any odds.
“Can I win? Yes, I can win, like I won here. You have one chance and you have to grab it. It’s triumph and disaster witnessed in real time.”
For a while, it seemed like Venus was going to have one of those moments against unseeded 25-year-old Coco Vandeweghe, who took the first set of a heavyweight showdown on a tiebreak.
The girl from the New York socialite family was knocking the cover off it.
But Venus, after six years of fighting to stay at the top of the game as she battled chronic fatigue caused by Sjogren’s syndrome, suddenly looked her age.
Then, something inside her switched on.
The furnace of a champion started to burn. And for the two sets that followed, she was simply magnificent, breaking serve for fun and hammering past the youngster 6-7 6-2 6-3.
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Then, out swaggered Serena to take on the tournament’s fairytale story in Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, the 34-year-old who first played in 1997 but who disappeared off the game’s radar for close on a decade to deal with the trauma of an abusive father.
A day earlier, the Croatian had come through a marathon three-setter with Karolina Pliskova, which had left her an emotional and physical wreck.
So no wonder, when it came to the crunch, she was no match for maybe the greatest female player of all time.
Serena needed just 50 minutes to waft her aside 6-2 6-1 and set up her perfect date.
The 22-time Grand Slam champ said: “I couldn’t be happier at the results. For us both to be in the final is the biggest dream come true for us.
“She’s my toughest opponent. No one has ever beaten me as much as Venus has.
“So I just feel like no matter what happens, we’ve won.”
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