Match point saved, or squandered, depending on your perspective, as Dementieva thrust out her hand and pointed down the line where she should have, could have, hit her passing shot instead.

There would be no second chance, although there was plenty more high-level tennis with the fourth-seeded Dementieva living quite comfortably at Williams’s accelerated pace and keeping her routinely off balance. But while the second-seeded Williams was stretched, pushed and shaken, she could not be beaten, and she broke Dementieva’s serve in the 13th game with a clean backhand winner, then held on to her own serve to win, 6-7 (4) 7-5 8-6.

Serena Williams will now face her sister Venus, who had a far easier time in defeating top-seeded Dinara Safina, 6-1 6-0. The women’s championship match on Saturday will be a rematch of last year’s final and will be the fourth time the sisters have met for the title. Serena beat her sister in 2002 and 2003, while Venus, a five-time Wimbledon champion, beat Serena last year.

“It was really, really tough,” Serena said after her match, still a bit short on breath several minutes after it had ended. “She’s been playing so well and has won a lot of matches against me in the past.”

Dementieva, the fast Russian long hampered by her weak serve, beat Williams three times in a row at one stage, with the most significant of those victories coming in the quarterfinals of last year’s Olympics in Beijing. But Williams has now won their two encounters this year: she also beat Dementieva, in straight sets, in the semi-finals of the Australian Open, which was no match for Thursday’s three-set, two-hour-49-minute classic. “We gave the crowd a wonderful match,” Williams said. (NYT)

Paes-Black in semis

Top seeds Leander Paes and his Zimbabwean partner Cara Black breezed into the semi-finals of the mixed doubles event with a straight sets win over 11th seeded Andre Sa and Ai Sugiyama. The Indo-Zimbabwean duo needed a little over an hour to win 6-3 6-3. In the semi-finals, they will take on the 12th-seeded pair of Australian Stephen Huss and Spain’s Virginia Ruano Pascual, who beat fourth seeds Kevin Ullyett and Su-Wei Hsieh 6-3 5-7 9-7.