Kim Clijsters and Mary Pierce rode their sizzling summer form into the final of the US Open on Friday with three-set triumphs over battling semi-final opponents Maria Sharapova and Elena Dementieva.
Sharapova went down swinging against Belgium's Clijsters, who needed six match points to put away the top-seeded Russian 6-2, 6-7 (4/7), 6-3.
Pierce rallied from a lackluster first set to deny Dementieva a second straight trip to the title match at Flushing Meadows 3-6, 6-2, 6-2.
Clijsters, the fourth seed, earned a shot at her first Grand Slam title after coming up empty in four previous major finals.
She also will have a shot at an astonishing 2.2 million-dollar pay-day, thanks to her triumphs in three of four US hardcourt tournaments linked together by the US Tennis Association as the US Open Series.
As winner of the series, Clijsters will claim double the Open prize money of 1.1 million dollars if she lifts the trophy.
But Sharapova made her work for the opportunity, denying Clijsters five match points to force the tiebreaker in a gritty second set effort.
Serving to save the match at 5-6, Sharapova fell behind 0-40, handing Clijsters triple match point with a double fault.
Sharapova saved the first by punctuating a punishing rally with a drop-shot winner, then launched a backhand cross-court winner on the next.
An unreturnable serve brought the game to deuce, then Clijsters gave herself another chance with a forehand winner. Another winning serve kept Sharapova in it, then a double fault gave Clijsters one more match point, on which Sharapova came up with an ace.
"It was tough," Clijsters said of the missed opportunities. "I think I gave everything I had on those match points, and she just came up with better points.
"I just said from the third set, just go for your shots."
Unbowed, that's just what Clijsters did, giving herself a 4-0 cushion with two breaks before Sharapova held her serve. No sooner had Sharapova retrieved one of the breaks to make it 2-4 than Clijsters broke to serve for the match at 5-2.
"I kind of gave it all I had in the tiebreaker and in the third I just ran out of gas," said Sharapova, who still managed to prolong the match with ne last service break, before Clijsters broke her one last time to book her meeting with Pierce.
The 12th-seeded Frenchwoman out-gunned Dementieva in a battle of heavy-hitters, but not before a lengthy injury timeout between the first and second sets.
Dementieva had dominated the opening frame, pounding her groundstrokes and showing none of the weakness on her serve that has so often proved her undoing.
Then came Pierce's consecutive timeouts for treatment on two different ailments, a tight lower back and a sore right thigh that was a hangover from a previous match.
"After I lost the first set, I was like "OK, I need to get help because I can't play this way," Pierce said. "I wasn't able to play my game. I wasn't into the match. I wasn't able to move."
Dementieva said the break, which totalled 12 minutes in the end, was a piece of gamesmanship from the 30-year-old veteran, but in the end she said it wasn't a deciding factor in the match.
"I just gave her a chance to play better in the second set, and she took advantage of this," Dementieva said. "I was very close to winning the second game on her serve, so that means the timeout didn't affect my game.
"It was just some little mistakes that I started to do, maybe because she started to play deep and heavy."
As Dementieva declined - she dropped her serve to trail 4-1 with three straight errors - Pierce went in for the kill.
Showing why she is enjoying a resurgence after battles with injuries, fitness and sheer motivation, Pierce hit with the same confidence that saw her sweep aside world No. 3 Amelie Mauresmo in the quarter-finals and avenge her French Open final defeat by Justine Henin-Hardenne in the fourth round.
"I can't believe it, this is amazing," Pierce said after reaching her second Grand Slam final of the season. "I don't really know what to say."
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