Little Sisters in Final in Australia
MELBOURNE, Australia — The Australian Open women’s final will be a match between Serena Williams and Dinara Safina for the trophy and the No. 1 ranking in the world.
Saturday’s final will also be a contest between little sisters who have made good. Serena grew up in the shadow of her older sister Venus and now has won more Grand Slam singles titles than her sibling. (They could win another title together here in the doubles final.)
Safina, who grew up in awe of her older brother Marat Safin, the 2005 Australian Open champion,, now finds herself on the verge of joining him as a major champion and world No. 1.
“It would be amazing to have the same trophy as my brother,” she said. “It’ll be a dream come true.”
That dream is still far from realized, however, even after the third-seeded Safina’s 6-3, 7-6 (4) victory over her less decisive Russian compatriot Vera Zvonareva in Thursday’s semifinals.
The second-seeded Williams has a 5-1 edge over Safina and has made an odd habit of winning in Melbourne: taking the singles title in 2003, 2005 and 2007. Though the overall level of her tennis has been below her highest standard, she has played and served convincingly in patches here, saving some of her greenest patches for her match with Elena Dementieva on Thursday.
Playing indoors, as she has in the last two matches, has certainly helped Williams find her service rhythm. The roof was closed for both women’s semifinals on Thursday, as outside, in the unusually empty streets and parks of Melbourne, temperatures were spiking to 111 Fahrenheit.
“It was the right decision to play indoor,” Dementieva said. “We couldn’t survive outside.”
Dementieva, a longtime member of the Williams sister chase pack, had been in peak form early this season: winning 15 matches in a row with her remarkable groundstrokes and improved serve. But Williams, in trouble in the last two rounds, has long had a gift for rising to the biggest tennis occasions, and she lifted her game again: proving the steadier, stronger force in a 6-3, 6-4 victory.
Her poised, opportunistic — if far from spotless — performance snapped a three-match losing streak against the fourth-seeded Dementieva and put her in position to win her 10th Grand Slam singles title.
“It would be cool,” she said. “Maybe I’ll get the special 10-plus bonus mail. I’m sure that people who have 10 plus Grand Slams get special letters. I’ll be part of a really elite club.”
The motivations of the Williams sisters are sometimes hard to discern. But Dementieva, the tall, elegant blond from Moscow would have been delighted with just one major title. Her fine attacking baseline game has long been restrained by her shaky serve. Many a qualified consultant has failed to help her overcome the weakness, including former Wimbledon men’s champion Richard Krajicek, whose smooth, textbook serve was a delight to behold.
But Dementieva has continued to search for solutions and has worked most recently with Harold Solomon at his Florida academy and with her new traveling coach, former Russian professional Andrei Olhovskiy.
Her serve has become less of a liability and even an occasional strength, as last year’s emotional gold medal at the Olympics in Bejing confirmed. But late-round pressure in Grand Slam events remains the truest test of any shot, and though Dementieva’s big groundstrokes were certainly a match for Williams’s, her serve betrayed her once more at critical phases of this intense match in which games routinely dragged to multiple deuces.
Dementieva would finish with eight double faults, all coming in the second set. Three of them came in the critical fifth game, when she served with a 3-1 lead and appeared to have regained the momentum.
She had saved a break point by wrong-footing Williams, who fell hard to the blue court in her blue dress, legs splayed. Dementieva lifted her hand and apologized, even though she had nothing to apologize for. She had, after all, just ripped a terrific forehand crosscourt.
But back at deuce with Williams looking flustered, Dementieva double faulted on the next two points to lose the game and was soon shrieking even louder than usual at herself in the next game. She would never hold serve again as Williams broke her to go up 4-3 and then broke her back after losing her own serve to go up 5-4.
The last point of that game was decided by one of many extended, eye-catching rallies in this match: many of them punctuated by Dementieva’s screams and Williams’s growls. The American prevailed with a backhand winner moving forward and then served out the match, slamming her 10th ace to get to match point and then pounding an overhead and jumping repeatedly with delight.
Dementieva grinned as she shook Williams’s hand at the net, but it could not have been a reflection of her deeper thoughts. She was in the form of her life this Australian summer and had put herself in range of her career goals by winning warm-up tournaments in Auckland and Sydney, allowing Williams just four games in a straight-set victory in the Sydney semifinals.
But though she had also beaten Williams on a hardcourt in last year’s Olympics, she has yet to beat her in a Grand Slam tournament.
“I think she was moving better today, and her first serve percentage was quite high,” Dementieva said.
Actually it wasn’t. It was just barely over 50 percent, but she did serve and play better on the critical points. So did Safina, who like her still more famous older brother, can sometimes experience massive mood swings in the course of a match.
She reached her first major final at last year’s French Open after saving match points in two different matches. She has been on another wild ride here: saving two match points against Alize Cornet of France in the fourth round and flirting with more big trouble against sentimental favorite Jelena Dokic of France in a three-set quarterfinal.
But she kept it simpler against Zvonareva, and now in the same year that her brother bid farewell to the Australian Open in what he insists is his last season on tour, Safina is now just one more victory from the sort of family double the Williamses consider routine.
“I’ve been watching my brother on TV winning this tournament,” Safina said. “Even if I think about it now, I still have tears in my eyes. It’s great I can follow on his steps, because he was my idol, and he’s still my idol.”
