DUBAI, UAE - She won an all-Williams battle in the semifinals and gained sweet revenge against an opponent who had given her problems in the past in the final, and Venus Williams emerged from the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships with her 40th Sony Ericsson WTA Tour singles title.
The most intriguing match of the $2,000,000 tournament came in the semifinals as the Williams sisters stepped onto Centre Court for the 19th chapter of their rivalry. Serena Williams, ranked and seeded No.1 this week, had won nine of their prior 18 encounters; Venus, ranked and seeded No.6 this week, had won the other nine. They split the first two sets and eventually settled into an on-serve third set, with the tie-break deciding it all - and it was Venus who closed it out, 61 26 76(3), to take a 10-9 lead in the family head-to-head.
On the bottom half of the draw, Virginie Razzano was putting together the best week of her career. Ranked No.58 and unseeded, she upset two of the week's highest seeds - No.2 seed Dinara Safina and No.5 seed Vera Zvonareva - in the second round and quarters, en route to the biggest final of her career. And it's not like she hadn't had success against Venus before: she had lost their first two meetings, but in their third and most recent she rallied from triple match point down in a second set tie-break and eventually won in the final of Tokyo in 2007.
Lightning would not strike twice, however. The first set of the final was close, as the two stayed on serve until the last game, when Williams converted on her first break point of the match to take it, 6-4. She carried that momentum into the second set and raced to a 5-0 lead, then regrouped after a late surge from Razzano and some of her own problems on the second serve to prevail, 64 62.
"I have to congratulate Virginie on such a great week - she beat so many Top 10 players and just played so well today. She really had a better week than I did," Williams said. "But it was a wonderful week for me too. I was able to win against the best player in the world in the semifinals, and I'm happy to have played such a good player in the final. I think I got a little lucky today."
"I can't compare today with Tokyo," Razzano said. "This was a new, different match. There were no easy matches here - most of the players I played were in the Top 20, Top 5 even. Venus is a real champion and played very well tonight."
Williams emerged with the 40th singles title of her Tour career, the 12th player in Tour history - and first active player - to hit the big 4-0. The icing on the cake is that for the first time since August 2003, she will be ranked in the world's Top 5 - it's a long time coming, considering she has won Wimbledon three times in the five and a half years since. She has been No.1 in the world before, though.
"I'm so excited to move back up the rankings! It seems like forever I was in the Top 5. So much has happened since then. With God's blessing, I'll keep moving forward and closer to my goal of getting back to the top."
Razzano's run to the final was dramatic to say the least. Her victory over world No.2 Safina was her first victory over a Top 5 player; she followed it up a few days later with a win over world No.5 Zvonareva, the longest match of the tournament, after which the Frenchwoman left the court in tears of joy. A crowd favorite right until her final forehand into the net against Williams in the final, she will hope to build on this momentum to eventually return to the Top 25, where she was ranked as recently as a year ago (her career-high ranking is No.24).
"This was the best week of my career," Razzano declared. "I'm very proud of my results, the players I beat and the connection I made with the fans in Dubai. Now I'll take a week to recover and see my family, then get ready for Indian Wells."
The biggest story of the week may not have come from the runs of Williams and Razzano, however. Israel's Shahar Peer, who has been ranked as high as No.15 in the world, was denied an entry visa into the United Arab Emirates at the last minute, setting off a firestorm of controversy. It not only led to the UAE changing its policy to allow an Israeli men's player entry for the men's event this week, but also the Tour giving the event record penalties (click here to read more).
"They do an excellent job at this tournament. They do care about the players and putting on a great event," Williams continued. "Despite a very challenging week for everyone, we got a positive result in the end. We all worked together. Shahar was very brave and paved the way for what happened this week with the men's event, and hopefully all the right things will be in place when we come back."
Cara Black and Liezel Huber capped a phenomenal fortnight with a victory in the doubles. Having won the 23rd Tour title of their illustrious partnership a week ago in Paris, the top seeds won their 24th earlier on Saturday in Dubai with a 63 63 win over unseeded combination Maria Kirilenko and Agnieszka Radwanska.
"We really love coming to Dubai," Black said. "We have such a great record here. We had tough opponents tonight and we fought hard, and in the end it's another great week for us so we're really pleased."
Black and Huber have now won the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships title three straight years, their first hat-trick. They beat Svetlana Kuznetsova and Alicia Molik in the 2007 final and Yan Zi and Zheng Jie in the 2008 final.
"It's a great feeling to win our second title in a row," Huber said. "We played solid all week. We've both been a little under the weather the last few days but still got the job done tonight. We love the Gulf tournaments. We've had a lot of success here, winning here three times now and at the Sony Ericsson Championships in Doha last November. The fans are really great to us whenever we play here.
"We'll take a little time off now, working on the physical side of things before hitting again and then getting ready for Indian Wells. We haven't played there in a number of years."
See photos in the Photo Gallery presented by Dubai Duty Free.
