U.S. Open women’s final will offer chances for redemption

Serena Williams will attempt to salvage a difficult year and Caroline Wozniacki will attempt to jump-start a career here Sunday.

When they meet in the U.S. Open final in 23,000-seat Ashe Stadium, Williams will be the overwhelming favorite, as she almost always is in any match she plays. She remains No. 1 in the world, and as she heads toward her 33rd birthday Sept. 26, she has become the oldest woman to hold that top spot since the ranking began in 1975.

Nevertheless, she would be the first to admit that because tennis identifies its successes by Grand Slam tournament results, she needs a good one Sunday. She has won 17 major titles, but failed to advance to so much as a quarterfinal of a major this year before she got to New York.

“There are always skeptics,” Williams said. “…what people might write or people might not believe. I worked really hard for Wimbledon. I worked really, really hard, and I was really sad and disappointed and shocked that I wasn’t able to win.

“I worked hours, more than I worked before. Maybe it’s just paying off now.”

She has not lost a set, or more than three games in any set, in her matches here.

Wozniacki has played Williams nine times and lost eight. This year, she has lost her last two matches against Williams, but both times in three sets.

“It’s going to be the U.S. Open finals,” Wozniacki said. “It’s going to be a tough one. It’s going to be exciting. Either way, it’s been a great tournament for me, and I hope I can get one more win under my belt.”

While Williams ranks fifth all time in length of stay at No. 1 — behind Steffi Graf, Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert and Martina Hingis — with 205 weeks at the top, Wozniacki is just four spots below with 67 weeks. And that’s without winning a major tournament.

She also ranks fourth on the tour among active players in tournament titles with 22. The first three, in order, are Serena and Venus Williams and Maria Sharapova.

Wozniacki finished both 2010 and ’11 as No. 1 on the WTA tour, but then slipped to No. 10 the next two years, and just got back to that spot with her performance here.

“It would mean so much to me,” Wozniacki said of winning a U.S. Open. “I have been close before” — in 2009, when she made the U.S. Open final — “… I would love to win it and have a Grand Slam tucked under my belt. It would definitely have the media stop talking about my lack of a Grand Slam, so that would be nice.”

Williams and Wozniacki are close friends off the court, but both were firm in rejecting the notion that friendship would play any role in how either performs Sunday.

Williams got the biggest laugh with her response to that.

“If I can play Venus, I can play anybody,” she said. “I grew up with Venus. We actually lived together going on 33 years, which is kind of sad.”