Italy’s Flavia Pennetta stunned Wimbledon champion Venus Williams with an impressive 6-4 7-6 win to reach the Bangkok Open final on Saturday.
BANGKOK: Italy’s Flavia Pennetta stunned Wimbledon champion Venus Williams with an impressive 6-4 7-6 win to reach the Bangkok Open final on Saturday.
Pennetta held her nerve as the second-seeded American launched a determined fight-back, the Italian emerging victorious in a marathon second set tiebreak to end her opponent’s hopes of reaching a third straight WTA final.
“That was one of the most beautiful wins of my career,” Pennetta said. “When she came back, I started to think I’d lost my chance to win. I knew it would be a tough match. I was a little nervous but I played good tennis.”
Pennetta, ranked 49th in the world and winner of three tour titles, added: “I was against such a great player. I just had to go for it, because anything can happen.”
The seventh seed unleashed some powerful serves and venomous groundstrokes and chased everything the lofty American threw at her, breaking serve at 5-4 to take the first set.
Pennetta broke her opponent at 2-2 in the second and with the help of a succession of double faults and sloppy returns from Williams, opened up a comfortable 4-2 cushion.
However, the winner of 36 WTA titles came straight back, whacking a series of topspin-loaded forehands to turn the match around and move 6-5 ahead.
Pennetta levelled to force a tense tiebreak, which she clung on win 10-8, punching the air with both fists and breathing a huge sigh of relief.
“She played really well, she was eager,” a sombre-looking Williams said. “I made a lot of errors, a lot of mistakes. She did a good job of staying in the match. I wasn’t surprised by her, she’s capable of playing well.”
The loss leaves Williams facing an anxious wait to see if she will get one of the eight spots at the season-ending championships in Madrid. She is currently eighth in the WTA Race with the first four berths already assured.
Pennetta will meet either Zi Yan of China or Taiwan’s Chan Yung-jan in Sunday’s final.
Serena wins. Serena Williams and Elena Dementieva advanced to the final of the Kremlin Cup on Saturday.
Williams beat top seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova 7-6 (2) 6-1, while Dementieva eliminated fellow Russian Dinara Safina 6-1 6-0.
Williams put early pressure on the No. 2 ranked Kuznetsova, breaking her in the third game of the first set. But Kuznetsova levelled at 4-4 after Williams netted an easy forehand on the third break point.
Williams dominated the tiebreaker, going up 3-0 and 6-1 before clinching the first set. The No. 7 ranked Williams then broke Kuznetsova in the second and fifth games of the second set to win in 1 hour, 28 minutes.
Williams has not dropped a set on the way to her third final this season. The eight time Grand Slam champion is playing in Moscow for the first time in a decade. In 1997, the 16-year-old Williams qualified and lost in the first round when she was ranked 448th.
The 22-year-old Kuznetsova, who won the US Open in 2004, was playing the 300th match of her professional career.
Dementieva, the 2001 and 2004 runner up, had little trouble against an erratic Safina. After trading breaks early in the first set, Dementieva won eleven consecutive games to win in 1 hour, 9 minutes.
Gonzalez, Ljubicic loseSecond seed Fernando Gonzalez and defending champion Ivan Ljubicic both suffered quarter-final exits from the Vienna Open, leaving world number three Novak Djokovic as the tournament’s only remaining seed.
Ljubicic, seeded third and bidding to win the Vienna Open for a third successive year, was beaten 6-3 6-3 by Italian world number 73 Andreas Seppi on Friday.
Gonzalez was then defeated 6-3 4-6 6-4 by Spanish former world number one Juan Carlos Ferrero.
Top seed Djokovic faced a scare of his own, defending two match points before eventually seeing off Argentine seventh seed Juan Ignacio Chela 6-3 5-7 7-6. Djokovic will now face Seppi in the semi-finals while Ferrero takes on Switzerland’s Stanislas Wawrinka, a 6-7 6-3 6-4 winner over Spain’s Feliciano Lopez in the day’s remaining quarter-final.
Ljubicic’s defeat was probably the biggest shock of the day with Seppi handing the Croatian his first ever loss in the Austrian capital.
The world number 13, whowon the Vienna title in 2005 and 2006, was broken three times during a surprisingly one-sided encounter.
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