US Open thriller: Serena edges Azarenka!

I’ve been really down on women’s tennis for awhile but this year’s US Open really redeemed the female side of my favorite sport.

Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka played the best women’s championship match since Steffi and Monica faced off in 1995 and the match could have gone either way right up until the end when Serena managed to pull out a 6-2, 2-6, 7-5 victory.

Azarenka, the reigning Australian Open champ and world number one, was poised for victory up 5-3 in the third but Serena shifted into a higher gear and reeled off the last four games to claim her fourth US Open crown.

“Oh my god,” said Williams in her on-court speech. “I honestly can’t believe I won. I really was preparing my runner-up speech, because I thought, ‘Man, she’s playing so great.’ ”

The victory caps off a stellar summer for Serena who won her fifth Wimbledon crown in July then her first Olympic Gold Medal in singles in August. She and sister Venus also won their fifth doubles crown at Wimbledon and their third gold medal in doubles at the Olympics.

Already the best player of her generation, Serena is also one of the greatest female players of all time with 15 grand slam singles titles overall. But she is still behind Margaret Court (24), Steffi Graf (22), Chris Evert (18) and Martina Navratilova (18).

But Serena is displaying the same kind of longevity as those champions and is still going strong at 30. Her first US Open title came back in 1999 when she was just 17.

“I never thought I would even come close to breaking those records,” she said after the  match. “But if I can play consistently and play some more matches at Wimbledon, then it will be awesome. We’ll see. If I could win two a year it would be great.”