Williams’ charge not watered down

Venus Williams annexed yet another distinction Thursday afternoon: She became the only known player in the Wimbledon draws to wax adoringly of the rain.

“Rain is good for me,” she said, and it’s beginning to make a lot of sense, for where the rest of recent tennis years has brought her disharmony plus middling results, Wimbledon has become a relative sanctuary.

With her functional win Thursday over Svetlana Kuznetsova, 6-3, 6-4, Williams arrived at a semifinal opposite French Open finalist Ana Ivanovic, Williams’ first Grand Slam semifinal since Wimbledon 2005 and her second since Wimbledon 2003.

The bottomless winning smile has resurfaced.

Her sense of tennis prominence has flared again, as when she said, “Yeah, I’m a really big-match player.”

Shoot, with her three previous titles and her trademark serve, she might just be the favorite.

“Now, why would I say anyone else?” she said. “C’mon . . . My self-esteem would be quite low if I would name another person.”

Kuznetsova, asked if she’d also rate Williams the favorite, mentioned No. 1 Justine Henin and said, “They’re both going to play final, that’s what I think. I think it’s going to be very interesting match.”

Adding that if Williams keeps serving the way she has, then the chance of her winning is “really good,” Kuznetsova said.

If both players prove accurate, Williams will become the lowest-seeded woman ever to win Wimbledon. Her No. 23 seeding would surpass the previous record of No. 14, held by one Venus Williams in 2005.

Ivanovic, 19, warded off three match points in a battle of teens with 18-year-old Czech Nicole Vaidisova, 4-6, 6-2, 7-5, and arranged a semifinal that will feature a Serbian who grew up playing tennis in a drained swimming pool against an American who grew up playing tennis on Compton’s unpretentious courts.

Yet while Ivanovic’s upward path just got going, Williams’ lofty path just got upward.

Even after lukewarm Grand Slam results in 2006, and a six-month layoff (July through January) with peevish wrists, and an idle Australian Open and a third-round ouster at the French, and a ranking that dipped to 31, and two early rounds of trouble, and a double-fault in the third round that put her down 3-5 in the third set and made her mother bury her face in her hands, Wimbledon heals.

Even -- or especially -- its rain.

“I feel like I actually achieve clarity when it rains,” Williams said. “The longer I have to sit and wait, the clearer my game becomes to me. I just see it a lot better.... Just the longer I think about it, the more it makes sense, the more my game makes sense.”

It evokes even childhood.

“I think the rain has a special significance for me because I grew up in Southern Cal where it never rains,” she said. “When it did rain, it means we had a day off from practice. I’ve always found the rain very calming.”

Her fourth-round match with Maria Sharapova stopped twice for rain, once overnight, but she outslugged Kuznetsova in 86 uninterrupted minutes while Kuznetsova felt mild pain from at least two sources.

For one, a 118-mph Williams ace early in the second set handcuffed Kuznetsova and then struck her. For another, Kuznetsova ached somewhat from cornrows that tugged on her head.

When rain delayed her later doubles match, she used the time to have the cornrows undone. Williams, home by then, probably used the time for calm.