She Can’t Win for Winning

Lose and live another day. Win, pack your bags and go home.

Welcome to the convoluted world of the season-ending WTA Championships. Not as complicated as college football’s bowl championship series, but close. If you were a little confused by the machinations at Staples Center on Saturday afternoon, you weren’t alone.

Serena Williams lost her match to No. 1-ranked Lindsay Davenport in three sets but advanced to today’s semifinals against Amelie Mauresmo of France. Davenport survived a lackluster start to beat Williams, 3-6, 7-5, 6-1, on Saturday before a crowd of 8,231 but did not reach the semifinals.

Clearly, winning and losing didn’t quite hold the usual implications. It all came down to Anastasia Myskina of Russia, who beat her countrywoman and friend, Elena Dementieva, 6-3, 6-3, in the final match of the day and will face another Russian, Maria Sharapova, in the semifinals.

Though Davenport and Myskina finished with identical 2-1 records in round-robin action, Myskina moved on because of the first tiebreaker, the number of sets won at the championships. Myskina won five sets and lost two, while Davenport was 4-3.

With Davenport out, Mauresmo can earn the year-end No. 1 ranking if she wins this tournament.

Davenport had a good laugh when she was asked whether Williams may have tried to help her by easing off in the final two sets.

“I would be lying on the floor if she said, ‘I gave Lindsay a bone and tried to help her qualify.’ I think she is great. And I get along with her. But I don’t think her mind works in a way that she was trying to help me out,” Davenport said.

Williams, who described her own play with an unprintable derogatory term, maintained she did not know what had to happen for her to move on.

“It is kind of cool you can lose and still play,” she said after having won five sets and lost three. “It is kind of weird, though. I feel like I am cheating the system.”

Myskina held a 6-4 all-time edge against Dementieva before Saturday’s match, and Davenport felt almost certain the French Open champion would prevail again and said she would not stick around to watch.

“If you were to ask me, I would say I’m not going to be playing tomorrow,” Davenport said. “I would be floored if Myskina lost to Dementieva.”

Myskina felt she couldn’t lose either way, saying: “Either I go home or stay here for semifinals. Both pretty happy for me.”

Dementieva was in the middle of the computer chaos last year. Mauresmo was at her hotel, packing her bags to go home to France as Chanda Rubin built a big lead against Dementieva. But Dementieva rallied, winning in three sets, eliminating Rubin and helping Mauresmo reach the semifinals.

Did Mauresmo end up giving Dementieva a present after last year’s assist? “No. I said, ‘Thank you.’ And I hugged her when I saw her,” Mauresmo said.

The middle match of the afternoon was meaningless in terms of affecting the semifinals. Mauresmo defeated 17-year-old Maria Sharapova of Russia, 7-5, 6-4. Mauresmo went undefeated in round-robin play, continuing to chip away at Davenport’s lead at No. 1 by beating three Russians, all in straight sets.

Unlike last year, she left nothing to chance this time.

“It was obviously very different last year the way I qualified,” Mauresmo said. “I was actually packing when I saw Dementieva come back into that match. So it was a pretty strange way. But this is also the nice thing about this championship ... it is different from what we used to see in the other years.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

WTA Championships

Scores are from four days of round-robin play. Initials are for players listed at left. Today’s singles semifinal schedule (play begins at noon at Staples Center):

* Amelie Mauresmo vs. Serena Williams. * Anastasia Myskina vs. Maria Sharapova. Doubles semifinal schedule (following singles matches): * Virginia Ruano Pascual/Paola Suarez vs. Cara Black/Rennae Stubbs. * Svetlana Kuznetsova/Elena Likhovtseva vs. Nadia Petrova/Meghann Shaughnessy.

*--* RED GROUP Player L.D. A.M. E.D. S.W. RR* W-L** ANASTASIA 7-6 (5), 6-3, 6-3 6-4, 3-6, 2-1 5-2 MYSKINA 6-4 4-6 SERENA 6-3, 5-7, 4-6, 6-3 6-4 7-6 (3), 7-5 2-1 5-3 WILLIAMS 1-6 LINDSAY 6-7 (5), 4-6 6-0, 6-1 3-6, 7-5. 2-1 4-3 DAVENPORT 6-1 ELENA 0-6, 1-6 3-6, 3-6 6-7 (3), 0-3 0-6 DEMENTIEVA 5 -7

*--*

*--* BLACK GROUP Player A.M. S.K. M.S. V.Z. RR* W-L** AMELIE MAURESMO 6-3, 6-2 7-5. 6-4 6-1, 6-0 3-0 6-0 MARIA SHARAPOVA 5-7, 4-6 6-1, 6-4 6-4, 7-5 2-1 4-2 SVETLANA 3-6, 2-6 1-6, 4-6 6-2, 6-4 1-2 2-4 KUZNETSOVA VERA ZVONAREVA 1-6, 0-6 2-6, 4-6 4-6, 5-7 0-3 0-6

*--*

* -- RR: Round-robin record; ** -- W-L: Sets won-lost (first tiebreaker)