Serena Williams moved a step closer to salvaging her season with a 4-6, 7-6 (2), 6-4 semifinal victory over Amelie Mauresmo in the WTA Championships on Sunday.
"She just went for it," Mauresmo said. "I would give all the credit to her. I was playing some good tennis and she really raised her level a lot."
PHOTO: AFP
Williams, ranked eighth and without a Grand Slam title this season for the first time since 2001, advanced to Monday's final against Maria Sharapova, the 17-year-old Russian who stunned her in the Wimbledon final.
Sharapova defeated countrywoman Anastasia Myskina 2-6, 6-2, 6-2 for the first time after losing all three of their other meetings this year.
Dressed in a pink-and-white ruffled skirt and pink shirt, Williams pirouetted and blew kisses to 9,022 fans at Staples Center who were clearly on her side.
Mauresmo's loss guaranteed Lindsay Davenport will retain the top spot when the year-end WTA rankings are released on Tuesday.
Swede Jonas Bjorkman and Australian Todd Woodbridge beat defending champions Bob and Mike Bryan of the US 6-3, 6-4 in a round-robin match of the ATP Masters Cup doubles championships Sunday.
Bjorkman and Woodbridge improved to 2-0, while the second-seeded Bryans slipped to 1-1.
In other matches, Bahamas' Mark Knowles and Canadian Daniel Nestor defeated Xavier Malisse and Oliver Rochus of Belgium, 5-7, 7-6 (2), 6-4, and Mahesh Bhupathi of India and Max Mirnyi of Belarus beat Gaston Etlis and Martin Rodriguez of Argentina, 6-3, 7-6 (5).
Wimbledon champion and top-ranked Roger Federer of Switzerland faces Gaston Gaudio of Argentina on Monday, the start of the opening round of singles competition.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later