Associated Press
Associated Press
TORONTO — Top-seeded Serena Williams advanced to the Rogers Cup final Saturday night, beating third-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland 7-6 (3), 6-4.
The 2001 and 2011 Rogers Cup champion will face Romania’s Sorana Cirstea, a 6-1, 7-6 (5) winner over fourth-seeded Li Na of China in the afternoon semifinal.
Williams is 6-0 against Radwanska, including the Wimbledon final last year.
“It was definitely one of the tougher matches,” Williams said. “Obviously, Wimbledon was another tough one. We actually have a lot of good matches.”
The 27th-ranked Cirstea ousted two former world No. 1s in Jelena Jankovic and Caroline Wozniacki this week and beat sixth-seeded Petra Kvitova in the quarterfinals.
“A new day, a new match,” Cirstea said. “It doesn’t matter who I beat the day before or what I’ve done. It’s just another day where I have to get out there and do the things to show the work that I’ve put in.”
Williams has seven tournament victories this year and 53 overall. In her last event, she won the Swedish Open on July 21. She has played Cirstea twice, handily winning both matches.
“She’s definitely not an easy player to play,” Williams said about Cirstea. “Her results recently have been really consistent and she’s found herself and she’s playing better and better and more confident. It’s going to be a really tough match.”
Cirstea won her lone WTA Tour in 2008 at Tashkent.
“The main thing is I have to serve well, be aggressive, try to be in control, and go into the court with good mentality,” Cirstea said about the final.
Radwanska and Williams traded breaks twice in the first set, with the Pole keeping up with Williams’s imposing power game. Radwanska dashed corner-to-corner at the baseline to make returns and led 6-5, but Williams held serve to force a tiebreaker. In the tiebreaker, Williams blasted a cross-court winner for a 6-3 advantage, then ended the set with an ace.
Williams called for a medical timeout early in the second set because of “gastrointestinal issues.”
“I had some stomach issues and I had to settle them down,” Williams said. “I’ll be fine. I feel good.”
Raonic pushes on to Montreal final
MONTREAL — Milos Raonic beat fellow Canadian Vasek Pospisil 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (4) on Saturday to reach the Rogers Cup final — and the daunting task of beating Spanish star Rafael Nadal.
Canada’s top-ranked player will face the fourth-seeded Nadal, a 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (2) winner over top-seeded. Novak Djokovic of Serbia in the night semifinal.
Raonic is 0-3 against Nadal in his career and has never won a set against the Spaniard.
“Last time, he gave me a whooping in Barcelona,” Raonic said. “It was a very different surface on clay. And at home for him, it was tough.”
Djokovic and Nadal met for the 36th time, tying the record for the Open era set by John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl. Nadal leads the series 21-15, and cut Djokovic’s lead on hardcourts to 11-6. Djokovic won in Canada the last two years and had won 13 straight matches in the event.
Nadal has won seven tournaments this year, but only one so far on a hardcourt.
The 22-year-old Raonic, from Thornhill, Ontario, will crack the top 10 in the next world rankings after reaching the final of a Masters series event. The last Canadian to win the event was Robert Bedard, who took the last of his three titles in 1958.