Three former winners and the best player still active not to have won the title will contest the Wimbledon women's singles semi-finals on Thursday. Title-holder Maria Sharapova takes on the 2000 and 2001 champion Venus Williams in a Russia-US clash, while the 1999 winner and top seed Lindsay Davenport plays eternal French hope Amelie Mauresmo.
Sharapova, Davenport and Mauresmo were all in the semis last year, while Venus takes the place of younger sister Serena who went out in the third round.
Williams and Sharapova have played only twice before with the 18-year-old Russian winning on both occasions.
And Sharapova with 22 straight wins on grass under her belt has established herself as the star turn of women's tennis.
But the 25-year-old American has emerged from what had looked like the ashes of her career at this year's Wimbledon and appears to have rediscovered her fitness and motivation.
Sharapova said she expected the contest to be very physical.
"She's such a good athlete, she gets a lot of balls back and she's very tough. Mentally you've got to ready to always play that extra ball," she said of her next opponent.
But the second seed says that in the past year she has soaked up all the experience that has come her way and is now a tougher player in many ways.
Williams had little to say about her opponent other than "she definitely strikes the ball very well," but she did indicate that revenge could be on her mind for Sharapova's demolition of sister Serena in last year's final.
"Maria did play well and it takes a lot to win Wimbledon," she said.
"But Serena wasn't able to put up a lot of resistance that day (having just returned from injury). I think if she could have played 10 percent or 15 percent better it probably would have been a different story."
If past matches are anything to go by, Mauresmo can forget about her chances of becoming the first French woman to win Wimbledon since the fabled Suzanne Lenglen in 1925.
She has played Davenport 11 times and won on only three occasions, the last being five years ago in Sydney.
But the 25-year-old Mauresmo has been playing some of the best tennis of her career at the tournament drawing comparisons with the great Martina Navratilova for her serve and volleys and athletic all-court game.
Mauresmo reached her first Grand Slam final as a 19-year-old at the Australian Open in 1999 and great things were forecast for her.
But a combination of injuries and her own well-documented struggles to cope with the pressures of the big occasion have saw her fail to deliver.
She was close to reaching the final at last year's Wimbledon, only to come up agonisingly short in the semi-finals against Serena Williams when a lower back injury re-emerged.
Mauresmo says that she has learned the lessons of her past failures and is ready to go that one or two steps further on what she says is close to being her favourite venue.
The key against Davenport she feels will be the big American's powerful serve.
"She always serves pretty well against me. She has a huge serve," she said.
"When she's on her rhythm on that part of her game, she's tough to beat - especially on fast courts like grass."
Davenport will be aiming to make it through to the Wimbledon final for the first time since she lost to Venus Williams in 2000 but at 29-years-old time is running out fast.
This time last year, she left Wimbledon saying she was unlikely to be back, but a change of heart and injuries to some of the top players suddenly cleared the clouds away and she is back atop the world rankings.
"All of a sudden after I kind of opened my big mouth I started playing a lot better, started believing in myself for the first time in a couple of years," she said.
"Right now I can't even think about stopping. I feel really excited to still be where I'm at. I have a lot of opportunities ahead of me."