Serena Williams and Lindsay Davenport set up an Australian Open showdown in Melbourne on Thursday after fighting back from the brink of defeat in two epic semifinal duels.
Former world number one Williams pulled off an extraordinary escape to defeat fourth-seeded Russian teenager Maria Sharapova, saving three match points to win 2-6, 7-5, 8-6 in two hours and 39 minutes.
Top seed Davenport, meanwhile, was made to work just as hard before she finally overcame French 19th seed Nathalie Dechy 2-6, 7-6 (7/5) 6-4 in a nerve-jangling encounter on Rod Laver Arena.
In the end, the experience of Williams and Davenport, who have nine grand-slam titles between them, was to prove crucial.
For Williams, it was a case of history revisited. Her pulsating contest bore a striking resemblance to her 2003 Australian Open semifinal with Kim Clijsters, when she saved two match points before going on to win.
Williams said she had been comforted by the memory of that Houdini act as she fought off three match points on Sharapova’s serve when trailing 5-4 in the final set.
”I thought, ‘Okay, Serena, you’re down match point but that’s okay, you’ve been down match point before.’ So I thought, ‘Okay, I could do this’.”
Williams said the victory ranks among her most satisfying.
”Those are always the best wins, when you’re down match point because it’s like you realize that you can’t give up,” she said.
Williams said she had kept her composure despite a high unforced error count — 53 throughout — which allowed Sharapova a free ride throughout the early part of the match.
”I was battling Maria and myself,” Williams said. ”I was playing two opponents because I was making a tremendous amount of errors.”
Sharapova said Williams’s experience of retrieving lost causes had been the key.
”She’s one of the best competitors out there,” she said.
”I mean, she’s been in those situations when she was down in the third set, and out of nowhere she knows how to turn it around. That comes from experience, that comes from her fighting spirit.
”The match could have gone either way, and she took her chances and she played well when she needed to. And that’s the difference.”
Williams will now meet Davenport in Saturday’s final, whom she leads 9-4 in head-to-head encounters.
Davenport has the better recent record though, having beaten Williams on the two occasions they met last season.
But the experienced 28-year-old will want to make a quantum improvement after toiling desperately against Dechy before finally staggering over the line.
She amassed 52 unforced errors and 10 double-faults, and it might have been a different story had Dechy kept her composure when leading 4-1 in the second-set tie-break.
Instead, she buckled and Davenport fought back to square the match, going on to clinch victory in the decider.
Davenport said she thought she had been heading for defeat.
”Making as many errors as I was making and not feeling like I could even keep that many balls in, being down a set and 4-1 in the tiebreak … I was still hopeful, but it wasn’t looking good,” she said.
Like Sharapova, Dechy believed that her opponent’s experience had been the key.
”Maybe she handled the tight moments a bit better than me,” said the 25-year-old, who had been playing in her first grand-slam semifinal.
Davenport, who delayed retirement at the end of last season after convincing herself that she could still challenge for honours at the highest level, is now contemplating her first grand-slam final for five years.
The women’s semifinals took centre stage at Melbourne Park, with the night session seeing a replay of last year’s final between world number one Roger Federer and Russia’s Marat Safin in the first of the men’s semifinals. — Sapa-AFP