Williams To Face Nemesis Pennetta in Zurich Final

Venus Williams will have a shot at one of her true nemeses in the final of the Tennis.com Zürich Open on Sunday, as both she and Flavia Pennetta won tough semifinals on Saturday.
 
Pennetta was the first to advance to the final, winning an all-unseeded battle with Anabel Medina Garrigues, 63 76(6). Although they had split their four previous meetings evenly it was Medina Garrigues who won their only previous hardcourt meeting, beating Pennetta handily in straight sets in Fed Cup play earlier this season; but the Italian fought hard to get her revenge on Saturday, rallying from 3-1 down in both sets and even saving a set point in the second set with the Spaniard up 6-5 in the tie-break.
 
"I'm very happy to be in the final," Pennetta said. "It's been a great year for me already and this is my fourth final. It's never easy to play Anabel, as she's a good friend of mine, but I think we put on a good match today. I won because I think I was a little more consistent than she was, and maybe I was physically stronger."
 
Pennetta will be playing in her 14th career Sony Ericsson WTA Tour singles final but it is only her second at this big an event, having gone this far at another Tier II event at Los Angeles this summer, where she finished runner-up to Dinara Safina. Her other 12 finals came at the Tier III or IV level (going 6-6 in those).
 
Two of the highest seeds in the draw squared off in the second semifinal of the day, with No.3 seed Williams beating No.2 seed Ana Ivanovic, 46 63 64. It was revenge for Williams, who had won the pair's first four meetings but lost their fifth and most recent one, in the quarterfinals of this year's Australian Open.
 
"It's always fun to win the close ones; this is why I love playing the sport, to pull out matches like these," Williams said. "She didn't give me much of a rhythm as she was going for winners on everything. I guess she wanted to prevent me from trying to dictate. I had a bad patch in the middle of the first set giving up five games in a row but thank goodness I was able to regroup in the second set."
 
"Of course I'm really disappointed but I also take the positives from such a good match," Ivanovic said. "That's definitely the best I've played since winning the French Open, and I'm hopefully going to keep this level for Linz and Doha."
 

Williams will be playing in her 60th career singles final on the Tour, going 37-22 in her first 59. This is only her second final of the year, although her first did come at arguably the biggest stage there is, as she beat Serena Williams for her fifth career Wimbledon singles crown. She reached two other semifinals this season.
 
The head-to-head between Williams and Pennetta is a unique one. Williams won their first meeting easily at Seoul last October, but Pennetta has won their last three, at Bangkok later that month and at Roland Garros and Moscow this year.
 
Pennetta is only the 14th player ever to notch three wins over Williams, but the first 13 were all ranked in the Top 4 at some point in their careers, including nine No.1s and most of the others reaching No.2 or No.3; Pennetta's career-high is No.15, which she reached just a few weeks ago. The Italian is also the seventh of that group to beat Williams three times in a row, and will try to become the third player ever to beat her four times in a row (Serena Williams beat her six times in a row at one point, while Lindsay Davenport has had streaks of four and five).
 
"Playing Venus in the final will be a totally different match than in Moscow last week," Pennetta commented. "Anything can happen in one week, like me losing to Jankovic in Moscow and then winning here, so the fact I won our last few matches won't mean that much. But I'll have a plan for sure."
 
"Playing Flavia in the final will be interesting," Williams said. "I'm sure she's playing well and really wants to win, but so do I, and I am determined to make less errors than I did in Moscow."
 
The doubles final will pit No.1 seeds Cara Black and Liezel Huber against the wildcard pairing of Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Patty Schnyder. Black and Huber beat Pennetta and Maria Kirilenko in their semifinal match, and will go for their ninth doubles title of the season; Groenefeld and Schnyder beat No.2 seeds Katarina Srebotnik and Ai Sugiyama in their semifinal and will chase their second doubles title of the year, having won in Stuttgart a few weeks back.