Clijsters beats Venus, to face Zvonareva in final

NEW YORK (AP)—Venus Williams has lost only two of 54 U.S. Open matches when taking the first set, and suffered that second defeat Friday to the same woman who inflicted the first—Kim Clijsters.
The Belgian beat Williams 4-6, 7-6 (2), 6-4 in their semifinal, giving herself football jersey
a chance to become the first woman since Venus in 2001 to successfully defend a U.S. Open title.
After trailing for much of the third set, Williams was right back in the thick of the match when serving at 4-all, 30-all.
At that moment, it didn’t appear to matter that the 30-year-old Williams was bidding to become the oldest woman to win a Grand Slam title in two decades. Or that she arrived at Flushing Meadows coming off a left knee injury that meant she hadn’t played a match in more than two months.
Then came two pivotal points. First, Williams double-faulted for the seventh time, giving Clijsters a break point. Next, Clijsters curled a perfect backhand lob over the 6-foot-1 Williams to go ahead 5-4.
Clijsters served it out, exending her U.S. Open winning streak to 20 matches and returning to the final, where she will take on Russia’s Vera Zvonareva on Saturday.
“This is what you try to achieve,” said Clijsters, also the 2005 U.S. Open champion. “I never expected I’d come back in this position. I was trying to do it. It wasn’t easy, but I stuck with it.”
Earlier Friday, Zvonareva reached her second Grand Slam final in a row by upsetting top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark 6-4, 6-3, having also beaten a Williams sisters in the semifinals—Serena .
Things looked good for Williams at the start. She converted the first set’s only break point while winning 20 of 25 points on her serve and getting the better of Clijsters during lengthy baseline exchanges with powerful strokes from both.
Williams picked up easy points with aces or service winners, but in the second set, though, Clijsters made a key adjustment, playing closer to the baseline, tightening up her backswing and pushing Williams around more.
With the wind gusting, Williams increasingly found trouble with her groundstrokes, spraying more and more out of bounds, and ending up with 50 unforced errors.
“I felt that I was hitting well with the wind. I felt that I was making her move around, and that’s what I was really tying to focus on,” Clijsters said. “I was able to kind of rise to the occasion when I had to.”
Still, her first six points in the pivotal tiebreaker arrived courtesy of Indianapolis Colts jersey
mistakes by Williams, including a pair of double-faults and a badly botched overhead she sailed long.
Summed up Williams, who was hoping to get to her first U.S. Open final since 2002: “I wasn’t able to play as well as I wanted. I had too many errors.”
Afterward, she brushed aside a question about her future in a sport she and her sister have dominated for stretches, saying, “I definitely feel like I’ll be back next year. This is what I do. I feel like I played great tennis, even with minimal preparation.”
Clijsters missed the 2006 U.S. Open because of a series of health problems, including wrist surgery, then skipped the next two because she was taking time off to get married and have a baby. Her daughter Jada, now 2 1/2 years old, pranced around on court when the Belgian collected her trophy 12 months ago by defeating Wozniacki.
A rematch might have been expected by some, but Zvonareva took care of that, wearing a long-sleeved shirt to brace against the wind and staying focused at changeovers by draping a white towel over her head.
Zvonareva played in her first major final at Wimbledon in July, losing to Serena Williams, and now gets a second crack at a Grand Slam title. She was steadier than Wozniacki, who averaged 11 unforced errors through her first five matches of the tournament—and made Pittsburgh Steelers jersey
31 against Zvonareva.
“With those windy conditions, you have to play, sometimes, ugly,” Zvonareva said. “You don’t have to expect to play your best tennis.”