Williams a double(s) winner

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MELBOURNE, Australia -- Serena Williams didn’t have to take this Australian Open doubles semifinal seriously. She had already advanced to the singles finals by beating Elena Dementieva earlier Thursday. She will have a singles finals match against the quickly-improving, powerful, younger, big, strong Russian Dinara Safina on Saturday. And Serena and her partner and sister Venus were matched against Australian Casey Dellacqua and Italian Francesca Schiavone, so the crowd was against the Williams sister.

But Serena and Venus had spoken after the doubles quarterfinals about how, when they decide to play doubles, they take it seriously, that they enjoyed playing doubles here because the commute is easy, the logistics are easy and they just enjoy it. And they meant what they said.

The Williams sisters advanced to the finals with a 6-0, 6-2 win over Dellacqua and Schiavone, and for a team that doesn’t play doubles very much, when they enter Grand Slam tournament doubles events, they’ve done pretty well. Of the 17 Slams they’ve entered together, Venus and Serena have won seven titles, including two here.

In Friday’s finals, the Williams sisters will play ninth-seeded Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia and Ai Sugiyama of Japan.

-- Diane Pucin