World number one Dinara Safina reached her first Wimbledon semi-final but she had a real fight on her hand subduing feisty German Sabine Lisicki 6-7 6-4 6-1.

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The willowy Muscovite's serve let her down badly at crucial moments in a tense match and she will need to sharpen her game if she is to have a serious chance against five-times Wimbledon champion Venus Williams for a place in the final.

"I was tough mentally - that was the key today," Safina said afterwards.

The battle-hardened Safina, playing her 50th match of the year, lost a tight tie-break on a double fault, one of 15 in a patchy performance on a sun-kissed Centre Court.

In one game alone in the first set, she had three double faults and could not cope with the unseeded Lisicki's power and pace which had earlier in the tournament accounted for French Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova.

"I have had a problem with the knee. I was always compensating it and I lost maybe the rhythm a bit. The serve is there. I just have to put the brain there," Safina explained.

But Safina, world number one like her brother Marat Safin once was, finally found her rhythm in a much more assured second set, dominating the 19-year-old Lisicki, a pupil of Nick Bollettieri's Florida tennis academy.

The top seed took complete control in the deciding set, racing to a 4-1 lead with a double break against Lisicki, who then called the trainer to massage her right leg.

The Russian, whose tortured expressions suggest she is as much fighting her own game as her opponent's, then finished off Lisicki, ranked 41 in the world, with ruthless efficiency.

Safina, who also dropped a set against former champion Amelie Mauresmo in the fourth round, has three times been a finalist in Grand Slams but has never yet managed to win one of the coveted titles.

She will play third seed and defending champion Venus Williams for a place in Saturday's final, after the American cruised past Agnieszka Radwanska 6-1 6-2.

"It's not going to be easy, a match against Venus," she said. "She likes to play on grass. I have nothing to lose. I want to go out, enjoy and show my best tennis."