Tennis
Serena cruises to WTA final
2012-10-27 15:40
Istanbul -Serena Williams' bid to crown her
sensational comeback year by regaining the WTA Championships title
carried her into the final with her fourth straight sets win here on
Saturday.
Williams' 6-2 6-1 success against Agnieszka Radwanska,
was a sequel to the close-fought Wimbledon final with the in-form Pole,
but despite that there was an overwhelming sense of inevitability about
it.
While Radwanska had had a record-breaking three-and-a-half
hour match against Sara Errani the night before, Williams had had a rest
day.
Stats showed that the underdog had already run three times as far as the former champion to get to the semi-finals.
Not surprisingly Radwanska had admitted that it would be an achievement "just to get to the court in one piece."
Serena's
side to side ground strokes soon made it clear that she would have to
cover large areas of court again - and that was something which could
not be repeated for long.
Briefly Radwanska made a little
progress, breaking back from an early service loss and reaching 2-2. But
once Williams had punished her tired opponent's second serve to break
it again, and then consolidated by holding with a love game, it was
mostly one way traffic.
When Radwanska hung on briefly by holding
serve for 1-2 in the second set, it only made Williams prepare a little
earlier for each stroke, tighten up her driving, and finish the match
quickly with controlled aggression.
Routine though the win was,
she seemed thrilled with the outcome. Waving ecstatically and fluffing
up her already voluminous hair she announced that all she wanted to do
now was finish the season with a win.
That will have special
meaning, given that this has been a year in which she showed she has
finally recovered from the horrific 12 months out during which a blood
clot in her lungs threatened her life.
It has seen her win the
Olympic, Wimbledon and Us Open titles, and the WTA Championships title,
which she last win three years ago and first won 11 years ago would cap
it off excellently.
She was due to play the winner of Victoria
Azarenka, the world number one from Belarus, and Maria Sharapova, the
French Open champion from Russia. And even as the number three seed,
Williams will be clear favourite.
Radwanska meanwhile can still
contemplate a season in which she closed up in the top three. She scored
two wins, led Sharapova by a set and 4-2, and but for two huge matches
lasting more than three hours, might have had a fair chance of taking
Williams the full distance, as she did at Wimbledon. Her future looks
good.