Serena Williams’ bid to crown her sensational comeback year by regaining the season-ending WTA Championships title carried her into the final with her fourth straight-sets win on Saturday in Turkey.
Williams’ 6-2 6-1 success against Agnieszka Radwanska was a sequel to the close-fought Wimbledon final with the in-form Pole but, despite that, there was an overwhelming sense of inevitability about it.
While Radwanska had had a record-breaking three-and-a-half hour match against Sara Errani the night before, Williams had had a rest day.
Stats showed the underdog had already run three times as far as the former champion to get to the semi-finals.
Not surprisingly, Radwanska had admitted that it would be an achievement “just to get to the court in one piece”.
Serena’s side-to-side groundstrokes soon made it clear the Polish fourth seed would have to cover large areas of court again – and that was something which could not be repeated for long.
Briefly, Radwanska made a little progress, breaking back from an early service loss and reaching 2-2. But once Williams had punished her tired opponent’s second serve to break it again, and then consolidated by holding with a love game, it was mostly one-way traffic.
When Radwanska hung on briefly by holding serve for 1-2 in the second set, it only made Williams prepare a little earlier for each stroke, tighten up her driving and finish the match quickly with controlled aggression.
Routine though the win was, she seemed thrilled with the outcome. Waving ecstatically and fluffing up her already voluminous hair, she announced that all she wanted to do now was finish the season with a win.
That will have special meaning, given that this has been a year in which she showed she has finally recovered from the horrific 12 months out during which a blood clot in her lungs threatened her life.
In 2012, she has won the Olympic, Wimbledon and US Open titles. The WTA Championships title, which she last held three years ago and first captured 11 years ago, would cap it off excellently.
She was due to play the winner of Victoria Azarenka, the world No.1 from Belarus, and Maria Sharapova, the French Open champion from Russia. And even as the No.3 seed, Williams will be clear favourite.
Radwanska, meanwhile, can still contemplate a season in which she closed up in the top three. She scored two wins, led Sharapova by a set and 4-2 and, but for two huge matches lasting more than three hours each , might have had a fair chance of taking Williams the full distance, as she did at Wimbledon. Her future looks good.