Venus Williams saved five match points in the second set and overcame her inconsistent ground game, rallying for a 2-6, 7-6 (4), 6-2 victory over Switzerland's Patty Schnyder on Saturday to reach the final of the Bank of the West Classic.
"It just seems as soon as disaster comes, I somehow find a way out of it," Williams said. "I didn't feel I was really on my game. My feet were slow and she played really well. You have to have that little extra step and I didn't feel like I had that today. I had to fight myself to get it out of me."
She will play for the championship against fourth-seeded Belgian Kim Clijsters, a 6-4, 6-0 winner over Anna-Lena Groenefeld in Saturday's late match.
The second-seeded Williams will play her 500th career match Sunday in the very tournament where she made her debut 11 years ago, when it was in Oakland.
Williams improved to 32-8 this year. She is 6-2 lifetime against Clijsters, and Williams retired in one of the two losses. She has won the last three meetings and her lone loss to Clijsters came in the title match at Hamburg in 2002 on clay.
Andre Agassi used a dazzling mix of shots to defeat Juan Ignacio Chela 6-4, 6-2 and move into the final.
The 35-year-old Agassi, his sights set on next month's US Open, needed just 69 minutes to beat his 25-year-old opponent from Argentina.
The top-seeded Agassi will go for his fourth Los Angeles title on Sunday, facing unseeded Gilles Muller.
Muller, a hard-serving 22-year-old player from Luxembourg, fought back from being down two match points in the second set to upset second-seeded Dominik Hrbaty of Slovakia 4-6, 7-6 (4), 6-1.
The final will be just the second on the tour for Muller, who defeated Agassi in the semifinals at Washington last summer before losing to Lleyton Hewitt in the title match.
Defending champion Nicolas Massu lost to unseeded Fernando Verdasco 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 in the semifinals.
Verdasco will meet third-seeded Gaston Gaudio in the final after Gaudio ousted Argentine compatriot Mariano Zabaleta 6-1, 6-1.
With temperatures on court reaching more than 50 degrees C , seventh-seeded Massu of Chile started better than his opponent and dominated the opening set to take a 1-0 lead after just over half an hour.
In the final set, Verdasco broke his opponent early, but fell to pressure from Massu's crashing forehand and gave away his serve in game eight.
Guillermo Coria rallied to beat Filippo Volandri of Italy 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 to advance to the final.
In today's final, Coria will face four-time former champion Carlos Moya, after he defeated Jiri Novak of the Czech Republic 6-4, 6-4.
Coria, also a finalist at the Masters in Monte Carlos and Rome, was down a set down and a break point for 4-2 to Volandri before he turned around their semifinal.
Coria leads the head-to-head with Moya at 4-2, having won the last four matches. They last met in the 2004 French Open quarterfinals.
Top-seeded Anna Smashnova defeated Croatia's Jelena Kostanic 6-2, 6-0 and will face Colombian qualifier Catalina Castano in the final of the Budapest Grand Prix.
Kostanic, who has never won a singles title in seven years on the Women's Tennis Association tour, received a warning from the umpire after using foul language and smashing her racket on the clay court.
In the other semifinal, Castano beat qualifier Laura Pous Tio of Spain 6-7 (6), 6-1, 6-0.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but