Serena Williams, her insatiable will to win as strong as ever, regained her composure after smashing her racquet and being on the brink of defeat to beat Caroline Wozniacki 2-6 6-3 7-6(6) on Saturday and reach the title match at the WTA Finals.
The world number one will face Simona Halep in Sunday's final after the pint-sized Romanian crushed Poland's Agnieszka Radwanska 6-2 6-2 in the second semifinal.Halep also demolished Williams during the round-robin stages earlier in the tournament, setting the stage for a mouth-watering rematch with the world number one. The best of friends off the court, Williams and Wozniacki slugged it out like two prizefighters for almost two and a quarter hours until Williams delivered the killer blow to end a contest filled with drama and escalating tension.
The American looked to be on the ropes after losing the first set and smashing her racquet in frustration, then falling 5-4 behind in the third set.
But Wozniacki, who lost to Williams in last month's US Open final, blinked first, missing her chance to serve out the match and the American made her pay by going on to win the deciding tie-breaker.
Williams, during the match, slammed her racquet into the purple hardcourts three times, destroying her equipment and incurring an official warning from the chair umpire Kader Nouni.
Sania-Cara in final
Sania Mirza and Cara Black showed nerves of steel as they saved three match points in the Super Tie-break against Kveta Peschke and Katarina Srebotnik to cruise into the summit clash.
The third-seeded Indo-Zimbabwean pair was trailing 6-9 but showed amazing resilience to reel off five straight points in a tense Super tie-breaker to clinch the issue 4-6, 7-5, 11-9 against the Czech-Slovenian combo. They will now clash with Chinese Taipei’s Su-Wei Hsieh and China’s Shuai Peng, who scored an easy 6-1, 6-4 win over Alla Kudayavtseva and Anastasia Rodionova in the other semifinal.
