Thursday, January 29, 2015

2015 Williams Watch-Serena To The Aussie Open Finals!

After the all-Russian semifinal ended with another Sharapova win over Ekaterina Makarova, the all American semifinal took place at Rod Laver Arena  between world number one Serena Williams and 19 year old phenom Madison Keys.

Keys knocked off fourth seeded Petra Kvitova and Big Sis on the way to her first ever Grand Slam semifinal.

This match was going to be a tough one for Little Sis because Keys is one of the few younglings who have the power in her serve and shots to match Serena.

Keys showed that power early and often in a tightly contested first set in which  a nervous Serena was immediately broken in her opening game, but eventually was broken by Williams to even the match in the first set at 3-3 despite a barrage of big serves and laser like ground strokes from Keys.   

Both players stayed on serve in the rest of the first set until the tiebreaker, in which Serena opened up a 4-1 lead before winning the tiebreaker 7-5 to take the first set.7-6.

Serena showed Keys who was the woman in the second set.  She broke Keys twice to run up a 5-1 second set lead.   But Keys showed she had some intestinal fortitude as well.   Serving to extend the match, she fought off seven match points to eventually take the game and force Serena to serve it out.

After Keys survived an eighth match point, Serena uncorked an ace to close out the hard fought match over Keys and win it 7-6 (7-5) 6-2.

She now has a shot at winning her first Australian Open title since 2010 and her 19th Grand Slam title overall.   Because she subdued Keys in the semifinal, she will continue to hold on to the world number one ranking no matter what the result of the final match is at 2 AM CST Saturday. 

Those of us who love Serena hope it's her capturing her fifth Australian Open title.

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