Kim Clijsters’s never-say-die philosophy kept her bid for her first Grand Slam title on track on Tuesday as she rallied to beat Wimbledon champion Venus Williams in three sets and book a US Open semifinal berth.
Clijsters was down a set and trailing 2-4 in the second, looking tentative in the face of Williams’s power and perhaps in the face of yet another Grand Slam disappointment.
But she turned it around to emerge with a 4-6, 7-5, 6-1 triumph and advance to a semifinal against top-seeded Russian Maria Sharapova.
”I just kept hanging in there. Even though I wasn’t playing my best tennis the first set and a half I found a way to stay in there.”
While only seeded fourth, Clijsters came into the Open as a red-hot favorite having won three of four hardcourt tune-up events in the preceding weeks.
In all she has won six titles this year, including the prestigious hardcourt crowns at Indian Wells and Miami in March and April.
But after she surrendered her serve in the 10th game to drop the first set, then fell behind 1-3 in the second, it looked as if the 22-year-old wouldn’t find a way to carry out her plan to take the match to the American.
She gave herself some breathing room with a break for 3-2, but dropped her own serve again before reeling off three games.
Clijsters still couldn’t serve out the set, Williams leveling at 5-5. After saving one break point in the next game, Williams had a chance to end the game, but Clijsters’s sheer persistence paid off.
Williams raced up to scoop over a Clijsters shot slowed by the net cord, but the Belgian was ready and waiting, forcing Williams to make another high backhand volley, which the Belgian also answered.
”For a set and a half, I was defening well, that kept me in a lot of games, and then I came back and got her tired,” Clijsters said.
”I noticed that she wasn’t running as well as before, and I knew that if I won that second set I had a good chance to win the match because I felt fine.”
Clijsters forced the decisive third set with her third set point, and Williams opened by holding her serve for the first time in five service games.
After that it was all Clijsters as she won the last six games against Williams, who dropped her final service game to love and said she was hindered in the decider by a sore hip.
”At the end of the day the best player usually wins, and she played the best today,” Williams said.
In Sharapova, Clijsters will meet a player she has beaten in all three career meetings.
The 18-year-old Russian was relieved to survive Petrova and her own mental lapses.
”I don’t know what I’m doing here,” said Sharapova, who started strong and raced to a 4-0 lead behind a sparkling forehand before errors stalled her charge.
Petrova battled back, winning the next four games to level the set.
That run included not only two breaks of the Sharapova serve but also a hard-fought hold of serve in which Petrova served a double fault but still denied Sharapova two break chances.
”I thought it was too easy in the beginning,” Sharapova said. ”I was making winner after winner. And then all of a sudden I went out of the stadium.”
”I didn’t feel like my game was there. I was making too many errors. Mentally I wasn’t there. I just didn’t have any motivation.”
Sharapova got the needed break in the 12th game, but she didn’t have long to savour it.
Petrova, who had taken Sharapova to a first-set tiebreaker before falling to her in the Wimbledon quarterfinals, opened the second set with a quick service break.
She couldn’t widen the gap, but she made it stand up as errors kept both players from developing any momentum.
”We both were on and off,” Petrova said. ”We both had some great points and we both had some bad — a lot of unforced errors.”
Sharapova cleaned up her game in the third set and took a 3-0 lead with one service break.
Serving for the match at 5-3 she surrendered the break but she got it back in the next to close it out, nailing a stinging service return that caught Petrova by surprise on the final point.
”It went like a bullet,” Petrova said.
In the remaining two quarterfinals on Wednesday, world number one and second seed Lindsay Davenport takes on sixth-seeded Russian Elena Dementieva, while third-seeded Amelie Mauresmo meets number 12 Mary Pierce in an all-French affair. – AFP
