Saturday 13th October 2007

PENNETTA UPSETS VENUS, MEETS YAN IN FINAL
by Barry Wood

Flavia Pennetta claimed one of the biggest victories of her career on Saturday when she overcame Wimbledon champion and former world number one Venus Williams 6-4 7-6 (10-8) to reach the final of the PTT Bangkok Open.

While the seventh seeded Italian served well, saying later it was the key to her win, Venus struggled with eight double-faults. The first of those gave Pennetta a break for 3-2, and she then fought off a break point to lead 4-2. Williams, though, pulled back to 4-4, but Pennetta earned another break for 5-4, and closed out the first set with ease.

With Williams increasingly having problems with her serve, Pennetta broke to take a 4-2 lead in the second set, but the American again pulled it back to 4-4. And when Pennetta failed to win any of three break points at 4-4 she thought her opportunity for an upset was gone.

"After 4-2 and the chance to go 5-3 (on her own serve) I started to think I've lost my chance," said Pennetta, who missed five months of the season with a wrist injury and saw her ranking plummet as a result. "At 4-4 I thought it was over and I wasn't going to win this match, but I tried to play point by point and finally I made it."

But only just. Venus held two set points at 6-5 and one in the tiebreak at 7-6, before Flavia closed out the match on her third match point.

"It's one of the most beautiful wins of my career for sure," said Pennetta. "I'm very happy about the match today. I played a great match. When I went to the court I was thinking maybe I can beat her, but I knew it would be tough to do it. But I really played a good match. My serve was so good today. I took a lot of points with my serve and put some pressure on her with that, and that's why I won today I think."

Venus credited her opponent for playing a fine match.

"She played very well," Venus conceded. "She was really eager to get her ranking back, and she had nothing to lose against me so she just tried her hardest on every point and went for every shot. I wasn't surprised, not at all. She's capable of playing well, and when they come out against me her and any other player knows they have to play their best and go for a lot more. She did that pretty well.

"I definitely had a lot of errors. I felt I was controlling the points a lot of the time and sometimes I'd make the error, but she did a great job to stay in the match, to stay in the point and wait for the error."

Pennetta will play China's Zi Yan in the final, after she beat Yung-Jan Chan of Taiwan 7-5 3-6 7-5 to reach her first Sony Ericsson WTA Tour final.

Despite her lack of experience, the 18-year old knows how to win matches and is likely to provide Pennetta with some stiff competition in the final. She not only qualified and reached the third round at a major WTA tournament in Charleston and the quarter-finals recently in Kolkata, but she won three consecutive Challenger events. She also has experience of the big occasion, with four WTA doubles titles to her credit.

"She made me fight today but I just wanted to keep focused and try to play with confidence," said Zi. "Actually I'm a little bit tired because I've already played a lot of tournaments, but I don't want to lose. I just want to keep going."

For one more match, at least.