Australian Open 2020 news - Will we ever find out who the real Garbine Muguruza is?

A player aged 26 with two major titles under her belt should have nothing to worry about, particularly when you consider she has achieved the unique feat of beating both Serena and Venus Williams in Slam finals.

But since her last triumph, against the older sister at Wimbledon three years ago, she has not kicked on and achieved what the world expected of her. Two months after that win, she became the world number one and it seemed that she would become a dominant force. She is now down as low as 32 in the rankings, and entered this year's Australian Open unseeded for the first time at a Slam since her breakout run at the 2014 French Open, where she beat Serena on her way to the quarter-finals.

We are left to contemplate a player who could achieve so much more than the fine CV she already has. Standing at six foot tall, she is taller than the majority of her contemporaries and has a vicious serve when on song. Her ground strokes are powerful, and belying her large frame, she can get forward well and is adept at the net, having played a great deal of doubles when she was younger alongside Carla Suarez Navarro.

These qualities have come together only on fleeting occasions. Instead we have seen a player just as likely to be bagelled as to bagel someone, as capable of putting together formidable runs as being knocked out with a whimper in the first round.

A coaching change in 2019, where she ditched the long-standing Sam Sumyk and replaced him with Conchita Martinez, appears to have done some good. Sumyk was in charge for both of her major triumphs but they appeared to have an uneasy relationship, bickering frequently with him on court, with Muguruza frequently crying during changeovers.

Martinez was nominally in charge when the Spaniard won Wimbledon as Sumyk was attending the birth of his child, and the two have a close friendship which could once again bear fruit. She has already got as many wins against top 10 players in 2020 as she achieved in all of 2019 and got as far as a Slam as she has done in her last seven attempts. More than that, she has dropped only one set since her horror start to the tournament, where Shelby Rogers dealt her a bagel.

Simona Halep remains the overwhelming favourite to beat Muguruza when the two clash in the Australian Open semi-finals on Thursday. But Muguruza has shown that, when she is feeling good and her game is working, that she will be a formidable opponent for anyone.

She has time on her side and needs to find a way to make everything click more often, or her career will be a story of what might have been.