Serena Williams snapped out of her early doldrums to roar to a record seventh Miami WTA title on Saturday with a 7-5, 6-1 win over China’s Li Na.
In a battle of the sport’s top two players, the US world No. 1 took her tally of WTA titles to 59, including 17 Grand Slam triumphs.
The win took Williams’ trophy haul to two so far this year — she took the Brisbane title in January — and elevated her to the ranks of Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf and Chris Evert as one of the only women in the Open era to win the same title seven or more times.
Photo: Geoff Burke / USA TODAY
“I was actually super-excited at the end,” said Williams, who already owned the most WTA titles in the combined men’s and women’s event, but had shared the overall record of six trophies with Andre Agassi.
“Obviously, I wanted to have the most titles here,” added the American, who lives in Miami and first played the tournament as a 16-year-old. “I guess that I’ve grown up coming to this tournament as a kid, watching so many players, and to be one of those players now is really, really awesome for me.”
Williams’ ebullient celebration was a sharp contrast to her somnambulant start, during which Australian Open champion Li powered to a 5-2 lead, with Williams surrendering a second service break with a double-fault in the seventh game.
The seriousness of her situation seemed to wake Williams up and she won the next five games to take the set, saving a set point in the 10th and hanging on to break Li in a 12th game that went to deuce six times.
“I really thought I could do better,” Williams said of her thoughts at falling 5-2 down. “My serve percentage was super, super lowand I thought: ‘OK, I can serve a little better and I know I can return better. I’m practicing all these years and I have a good return. I need to start doing it.’”
Although she delivered only three aces in a match that lasted just less than two hours, Williams’ serve did steadily improve as the match wore on, as did the power and precision of her returns.
She seized a 5-1 lead in the second set with a fierce backhand winner on her fifth break point of the game and wrapped up the contest on her first match point.
Although the match turned so dramatically, with the American winning 11 of the last 12 games, her Chinese opponent had little to reproach herself for as she continued to battle even as Williams inexorably pulled away.
“I don’t think I was playing bad,” Li said. “Maybe she just started playing a little bit better after 5-2 down. I think it was a pretty good match.”
Li, who won her second Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in January, has now lost 10 straight matches against the world’s top ranked player.
Li’s only victory in their 12 meetings was in 2008, but Williams said she always feels challenged by the world No. 2.
“We just have this never-give-up fight,” Williams said, adding that she also feels a special connection with Li because they are both still battling on the WTA Tour at 32 years old. “It just goes to show that you can still shine at any age.”
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
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
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier