Serena to final
Published Saturday September 6th, 2008
U.S. Open | Weather may delay match until Sunday
NEW YORK - Serena Williams wound up and smacked a shot directly at Dinara Safina early in the second set of their U.S. Open semifinal.
The ball hit Safina near her shoulder, ending the point, and she quickly turned her back to the net, muttering as she walked away, ignoring Williams' attempts to apologize.
Not much later Friday, Williams tried again to say "Sorry," except this time both players were standing up at the net after the American wrapped up a 6-3, 6-2 victory. Now Williams can take aim at a third championship at Flushing Meadows and ninth Grand Slam title overall.
It's Williams' first U.S. Open final since 2002, when she beat older sister Venus. This time, they met in the quarter-finals, and Venus was in the stands Friday, cheering. The siblings' parents, who also serve as their coaches, were there, too, after skipping the all-Williams match.
"I was thinking to myself, 'OK, if you're going to beat your sister, you have to go all the way,'" said their mother, Oracene Price.
Next up: Jelena Jankovic, who plays Williams in the final.
"Overall, she's, I think, the strongest player on the tour, together with her sister," said the second-seeded Jankovic. "Nobody has the power that they have. We cannot compare."
Jankovic eliminated Olympic gold medallist Elena Dementieva 6-4, 6-4. It will be Williams' 12th Grand Slam final, and Jankovic's first, and in addition to the silver trophy at stake, the winner will rise to No. 1 in the rankings next week.
The final is scheduled for Saturday night, but forecasts calling for rain much of the day prompted tournament organizers to announce contingency plans that could include postponing the match until Sunday.
"I'm going to try my best and that's all I care about," Jankovic said, "even if it's tomorrow or next day or in a week."
Williams got off to a shaky start against Safina, the younger sister of 2000 U.S. Open men's champion Marat Safin. Broken in her first service game, Williams fell behind 2-0, but she won seven of the next eight games, eventually doing a much better job than Safina of dealing with wind that gusted at over 20 mph.
Safina wound up with 41 unforced errors, and she repeatedly rolled her eyes or shook her head or shouted at herself in English or Russian, much the way her brother does.
Jankovic, meanwhile, lost eight of the first nine points and fell behind 2-0 and 4-2. But as Dementieva became more tentative and more erratic, Jankovic reeled off five consecutive games to claim the first set and a 1-0 edge in the second.
Jankovic also trailed by a break at 3-2 in the second set, before coming back again. She got plenty of help - 42 of the 66 points Jankovic won came from unforced errors by the fifth-seeded Dementieva.
Because Tropical Storm Hanna is expected to bring heavy rain and wind to the New York area Saturday, the start of the U.S. Open men's semifinals were moved up to an hour earlier that day. The tournament also was preparing to delay the men's final a day until Monday if needed.
The men's semifinals will start Saturday at 11 a.m. ET, instead of noon.
If rain forces the postponement of both of the men's semifinals and the women's final, which is scheduled for Saturday night, those matches would be rescheduled for Sunday. The men's semifinals would begin at 1 p.m., and the women's final would be slated for 9 p.m. In that case, the men's final would be rescheduled from Sunday until Monday at 4 p.m.
If the men's semifinals are completed Saturday, but the women's final is not, then the tournament plans to play both championship matches Sunday. One would begin at 4 p.m., the other at 9 p.m.
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