US OPEN 2009: Clijsters Beats Venus; Pennetta Survives

Kim Clijsters beat an injured Venus Williams 6-0 0-6 6-4 to set up a quarterfinal showdown with Li Na and a semifinal with defending champion Serena Williams, who demolished Daniela Hantuchova 6-2 6-0 earlier in the day.

The showdown between the two former US Open champs (Venus, 2000 & 2001) and Clijsters (2005) was a hard-hitting somewhat ugly affair with far more errors than winners with the Belgian coming through with more consistently aggressive shots throughout. Williams was clearly hampered by her left knee, and admitted as such later on after teaming with Serena to get to the Women's Doubles quarterfinals by defeating the team of Sorana Cirstea and Caroline Wozniacki 6-4 6-2.

The match of the day was Flavia Pennetta's 3-6 7-6(6) 6-0 win against Vera Zvonareva. Zvonareva had 6 match points in the second set against Pennetta and the Italian consistently kept her cool and played long points until she found her spot and hit clean winners on 5 of the 6 match points down. It was quite a display of mental toughness. After losing the second set, Zvonareva dissolved into tears and quickly lost the deciding set in rash of errors and rushed shots while Pennetta smartly kept the ball in play.

Pennetta plays Serena and Clijsters plays Li Na in the quarters on Tuesday, setting up a mouth-watering semifinal in the bottom half of the draw. The top half of the draw is a completely different tournament (Craig Hickman called it a Tier III) with only 3 seeded players remaining (Nadia Petrova (13), Svetlana Kuznetsova (6) and Wozniacki (9), the last two who play each other today) and only one of them can make it to the semifinal!

I smell a Serena Williams-Svetlana Kuznetsova final. The last time these two played at a major, the winner went on to win the entire thing, and that is the only Grand Slam match Serena has lost this year!