A rampaging Serena Williams moved to the brink of a record equalling 24th career Grand Slam title on Thursday storming past Elina Svitolina 6-3 6-1 to book her spot in the U.S. Open final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since returning to action after the birth of her first child Williams has come agonisingly close to matching Margaret Court\u2019s mark three times and will have a chance on Saturday to do so in front of an adoring home crowd for a second successive year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year Williams was left in tears following a chaotic and controversial loss to Naomi Osaka on Arthur Ashe Stadium. She has also lost two Wimbledon finals since her return.Now all that stands between the 37-year-old and her Holy Grail is Canadian Bianca Andreescu or Swiss Belinda Bencic, who will meet in the other semi-final later on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The semi-final offered a classic matchup of styles with Williams and her prodigious power up against Svitolina, one of the best counter punchers in the women\u2019s game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Williams did not have her \u2018A\u2019 game in warm conditions but the former-world number one knew exactly what was needed particularly on the big points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think she played amazing today but she played very high level at the beginning where you had to make a difference,\u201d said Svitolina. \u201cI think she knows what she has to do.The fifth seeded Ukrainian had no shortage of chances herself but could not convert any of six break opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A ruthless Williams, however, bombarded Svitolina with punishing forehands and six aces to register her 101st U.S. Open win, which tied her with Chris Evert for the most at Flushing Meadows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Williams arrived at the year\u2019s final Grand Slam with a scowl and an all business demeanor that has swatted aside a raft of challengers throughout her run to the final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Any concerns over the back spasms that forced her to quit the Toronto final and out of Cincinnati were eased when she opened her Flushing Meadows account with a 6-1 6-1 thrashing of old rival Maria Sharapova.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A rampaging Serena Williams moved to the brink of a record equalling 24th career Grand Slam title on Thursday storming past Elina Svitolina 6-3 6-1 to book her spot in the U.S. Open final. Since returning to action after the birth of her first child Williams has come agonisingly close to matching Margaret Court\u2019s mark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69842,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69840\/revisions\/69842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}