Clijsters will take on Zvonareva

NEW YORK - After trailing for much of the third set, Venus Williams suddenly was right back in the thick of her U.S. Open semifinal against Kim Clijsters, serving at 4-all, 30-all.

At that moment Friday night, it didn't appear to matter that the 30-year-old Williams was bidding to become the oldest woman to win a Grand Slam title in two decades. Or that she arrived at Flushing Meadows coming off a left-knee injury that meant she hadn't played a match in more than two months.

Then came two pivotal points. Williams double-faulted for the seventh time, giving Clijsters a break point. Next, the Belgian curled a perfect backhand lob over the 6-foot-1 Williams to go ahead, 5-4.

Williams stopped chasing and watched the ball fall, then hung her head. And that, basically, was that. Defending champion Clijsters held on, winning, 4-6, 7-6 (2), 6-4, to extend her U.S. Open winning streak to 20 matches and return to the final.

"I just wish," the third-seeded Williams said, "I could have played the bigger points a little better."

She is 52-2 after taking the first set in the U.S. Open - and both of those losses came against Clijsters, who will face No. 7-seeded Vera Zvonareva of Russia in Saturday night's final. If Clijsters wins the championship, she will be the first woman with two consecutive U.S. Open titles since Williams in 2000-01.

"Obviously, this is what you try to achieve," said the second-seeded Clijsters, also the 2005 U.S. Open champion. "I never expected I'd come back in this position. I was trying to do it. It wasn't easy, but I stuck with it."

Earlier Friday, Zvonareva reached her second Grand Slam final in a row by upsetting top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark, 6-4, 6-3.

Williams began by picking up easy points with aces or service winners, but also by hitting serves at up to 126 m.p.h. that immediately put Clijsters on the defensive even when the Belgian put returns in play. In the second set, though, Clijsters made a key adjustment, playing closer to the baseline, tightening up her backswing and pushing Williams around more.

Zvonareva played in her first major final at Wimbledon in July, losing to Serena Williams, and now gets a second crack at a Grand Slam title. She was steadier than Wozniacki, who averaged 11 unforced errors through her first five matches of the tournament - and made 31 against Zvonareva.

"With those windy conditions, you have to play, sometimes, ugly," Zvonareva said. "You don't have to expect to play your best tennis."

Bryans win men's doubles. After two sets of riveting tennis during which Pakistan's Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi and India's Rohan Bopanna came a few points short of winning the men's doubles title, Qureshi was handed the microphone.

"There's a bad perception that Pakistan is a terrorist nation," Qureshi told the crowd in 23,000-seat Arthur Ashe Stadium. "We're a friendly, loving, caring people. We want peace as much as you guys. May God bless us all."

He received a warm ovation from a crowd that included Bopanna's parents, who flew from India to New York for the match. And at that moment, it hardly seemed important that the 16th-seeded Qureshi and Bopanna had lost, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (4), to top-seeded Americans Bob and Mike Bryan, brothers who won their ninth Grand Slam tournament and third U.S. Open title.

There wasn't a single break of serve in 24 games, and the tiebreakers were decided by two and three points. The Bryans won their 65th career title - improving on their own record.

Bob Bryan said Qureshi's post-match speech "choked me up."

"I could see him. He was quivering a little bit. He was very choked up," Bryan said. "Just to give that message to everyone was very heartfelt."