The 6-0 scoreline in the first set of the Serena Williams/Agnieszka Radwanska semi-final is not an accurate reflection of the play. It was much more one-sided than that.
It lasted 20 minutes, as long as the half-time break at the footy, as long as it takes to cook a bowl of rice. Radwanska won just seven points. "You try everything and you think you're playing good, but it's still not going your way at all," reflected Radwanska. The stats sheet bore her out. It debited her with just three errors. Everything else was a whaling Williams winner.
"Everything was too good, from her serve (onwards)," said Radwanska. "I couldn't do much. Nothing at all, actually. I was just there kind of watching her play." Also too true. An enduring image is of Radwanska standing stock still, legs apart, as if turned to stone, as another Williams winner whistled by. It wasn't resignation, just helplessness. 
Rod Laver arena fell silent, save for the incongruously cheerful chirping of birds under the closed roof, and the statutory dill who cried out: "C'mon Serena." It was like barracking at a funeral.
No first round fodder from qualifying, Radwanska, a reknowned toughie, is the fourth-ranked player in the world. More correctly, she is No 3 in the second division. Williams is alone in division one. Radwanska acknowledged it. "If she's playing her best tennis, I don't think anyone can really play at her level," she said. "When you serve 190 km/h wide ... I don't know who's going to take that. Definitely not me."
Radwanska said this might have been the best set anyone had played against her. But it would take some checking. In their nine matches, Radwanska has taken just one set off Williams. In this tournament, no-one has won a set against her. Williams becomes a little bashful when asked to dwell on her tyranny, but she did offer this: "I've always said when I'm playing at my best, it's difficult to beat me."
Williams was supreme last year, but took points off herself for starting slowly too often and having always to fight back. She was sick of it. This day, she hit Radwanska the way the air does when you open the front door on a 40-degree north wind day. There was little finesse, no slices, nothing else off-pace. Everything was hard and deep, and came back shallow and slow, when it came back at all.
The way Williams tells it, a kind of monkey grip applies to players like Radwanska. The greater the margin Williams puts between her and the rest, the more she knows they will be coming at her, the more paranoid she becomes and the more thoroughly she prepares. "I worry about every match," she said. "I stress as much as the next person. I going up against these players at their peak, so I have to be at my peak as well." But others' peaks are Williams's foothills.
Radwanska was better in the second set, but only because of Williams' unwitting indulgence. She said so. "I have to be honest: I think she made a couple of mistakes," she said. "She played a little slower. She didn't play as good as the first set. She gave me the opportunity to play."
Momentarily, they played a game recognisable as tennis, mortal and lovely. The real Radwanska emerged, which salvaged some of her dignity, but only made it all the more frightening that this version had been so thoroughly suppressed in the first set. She worked the ball around the court, won a game on serve, and another on Williams's serve, to bring the crowd out of its stupor. She played perhaps the best crafted point of the match and Williams applauded. Her admiration was genuine, since she rarely had to bother with crafting points herself. Then she killed off the match anyway.
"I can't believe I'm in the final," Williams exclaimed, repeatedly and surely disingenuously. We can't believe that she can't believe; she has made six finals here, and won them all. At the end of last year, she took a sabbatical, so her surprise at being back so high in the rankings so soon might be genuine in that context. It wasn't so much downtime as time spent at other pastimes, without a minute to spare. "I was actually happy to get back into tennis," she said. "It's more relaxing and calming for me."
Hear that, Angelique Kerber? Serena Williams does 20-minute 6-0 semi-final sets for fun.