Wimbledon, England — Serena Williams has given Wimbledon new life.

After a week of drab matches and dreary weather, the All england Club yesterday hosted a tournament’s worth of drama in one match. There was pain: A muscle spasm knotted Serena’s left calf, sent her tumbling, and caused her to cry and scream. There was a prayer answered: The Williams family collectively wished for rain as Serena hobbled around the court. There was comedy, too: Serena, her legs wrapped and her stomach full of fluids after a two-hour break, pleaded with the chair umpire in the third set to allow her a brief visit to the ladies room.

“Isn’t there one right there?” she asked. “because i’ve been drinking a lot of liquids. it won’t take me long.”

Serena, twice a Wimbledon champion, held it in and kept her nerve, too. Yesterday, we saw the spirited, stubborn champion who didn’t show up at last month’s French open, where world no. 1 Justine Henin dispatched her in straight sets. Richard Williams, who rushed to his daughter’s side during a near two-hour rain delay, took notice.

“Unbelievable,” he said of Serena’s 6–2, 6–7(2), 6–2 fourth-round victory over Daniela Hantuchova. “like a young Mike Tyson in his day.”

Williams seemed en route to another routine defeat of Hantuchova, whom she had beaten five times in six tries. After an easy first set, Williams had recovered from a 5–2 deficit to even the second set at 5–5 when her body betrayed her. before she fell, she repeatedly smacked her calf with her racket. moments later, in the throes of a cramp, she moaned and cried as she lay on the grass, surrounded by a trainer, Wimbledon referee Andrew Jarrett, and a concerned Hantuchova. When the trainer applied a bag of ice, Williams screamed.

Had this been 1995, Serena would have had to quit. In those days, coming to a player’s aid on court resulted in a forfeit, a rule that was changed after Shuzo Matsuoka, playing at the 1995 U.S. open, was agony on the court before the chair umpire defaulted him for delaying the match.

Lucky for Williams, trainer Amber donaldson had time for a diagnosis and three minutes of treatment. She helped Williams to her feet, and Williams needed to lean on her racket to keep from falling over. She wiped tears from her eyes as Hantuchova served the next point, and she didn’t try to return the ball. Williams found a way to hold serve the next game, but fell behind 4–2 in the ensuing tiebreaker.

And then the band of dark clouds that Venus Williams had eyed hopefully from the stands delivered. Within minutes Serena was in the locker room, receiving massages, drinking fluids, and resting on ice. She emerged nearly two hours later with wrapped legs and long pants, but without much game. When the match resumed, Williams dropped three consecutive points to lose the second set, and she didn’t look good doing it. early in the third set, it seemed she might play her way into an insurmountable deficit, or that Hantuchova, one of the tour’s shakiest players, might devise a way to run Williams farther and faster than she could handle. it wasn’t until Hantuchova hit a winning drop shot that Williams got angry.

“That pretty much set it off for me,” Williams said. “I’m not going down today. I mean, no. There’s no way.”

Hantuchova did her part. The 24-year-old Slovak has milled around the top 10 for years yet has won only two titles. A battler she’s not, and she didn’t manage to win another game. The match ended on Hantuchova’s last of 28 unforced errors, a backhand into the net.

Serena is scheduled to play doubles today, but don’t be surprised if she and Venus withdraw from that event. Serena will need a lot more than grit to win her rematch with Henin, who advanced to the quarterfinals yesterday with a 6–2, 6–2, victory over Patty Schnyder. Venus might need a miracle later today, when she plays Maria Sharapova in the fourth round.

Venus, who has won this title three times, played so badly against Akiko Morigami, a woman who has lost more Grand Slam matches in her career than she has won, that her father walked off Court 2 in the middle of the third set.

One couldn’t blame Richard Williams for deciding that he had seen enough. in two service games in the second set, his daughter double faulted eight times. She missed forehands. She drilled backhands into the middle of the net. She accepted a break of serve as the nervous Morigami, charitably listed at 5-feet-5-inches and ranked no. 71 in the world, tried to serve out the second set, and then donated the set with four double faults. Her father left long before Venus failed to take advantage of a triple break point in the third set, before she found herself down 5–3.

Morigami, playing the third round of Wimbledon for the second time in her career, didn’t win a point on her next service game, and Venus was off, moving better, missing less, serving harder. Trailing 15–40 at 6–5 in the third set, she rattled off the final four points of the match as another of the day’s drizzles turned into a shower. The 6–2, 3–6, 7–5 score was good enough for a fourth-round date against Sharapova, but it didn’t please her father one bit.

Asked what was wrong with Venus’s serve, cause of 14 double faults, Williams said, “Hell if i know. She was double faulting more than a blind man. i think it’s confidence. When you have to struggle to hold your serve, you’ve got problems.”

Oracene Price, the Williams sisters’ mother, was more charitable.

“You know how it is when you’re ready for one player but not another?” she said. “Hopefully she’ll be readier than she was today.”

* * *

Rafael Nadal led by two sets to none and held a match point before the rain came. Then he nearly lost control. Nadal dropped two sets to Robin Soderling before taking a 2–0 lead in the fifth set when play was suspended by a final burst of rain that soaked the All england Club and scattered fans.

Three other men’s third round matches remain incomplete, though the women finished the third-round and three fourth-round matches. Two youngsters, 18-year-old Michaella Krajicek (her first quarterfinal at a major) and 16-year-old Tamira Paszek (her first fourth round at a major) remain in the draw.

tperrotta@nysun.com