Serena, Davenport Set All-American Final, Safin Beats Federer at Australian Open

Serena gave a re-cap of her conversations with her ego while fending off the match points.

"I thought, 'Okay, Serena, you're down matchpoint but that's okay, you've been down matchpoint before. It's a little closer this time,'" Serena said in her post-match interview. "So I thought, 'Okay, I could do this.'...I think I was battling Maria and myself. I was playing two opponents because I was making a tremendous amount of errors. I wasn't doing what I had practiced. But I just tried to stay positive out there the whole time."

Known for her ear-splitting grunt-shrieking during matches, Sharapova mysteriously stopped grunting at the beginning of the third set and immediately lost serve.

Serena said she was aware of her own grunting and upped the volume at the end of the match, turning the meeting into a cross between a porn soundtrack and a slaughterhouse.

"Sometimes if I wasn't grunting, I felt as if I wasn't giving all the effort," Serena said. "So in the last game I thought, 'Okay, I'm going to give everything, give all the effort here.' Then I started to grunt again."

In a match that was easier on the ears, Davenport trailed Nathalie Dechy a set and 1-4 in the second-set tiebreak before nerves set in and the Frenchwoman was unable to close the door, with the American prevailing 2-6, 7-6(5), 6-4.

"Maybe she handled like the tight moment a little bit better than I did," Dechy said. "But I think she's the No. 1 in the world. She's able to play such a high quality level of tennis. And on these points, like on these really close points, she was serving really well, she was going completely for them and making some good shots."

Davenport for her part says she feels lucky to still be around in Melbourne.

"I feel like I'm not playing that well, I'm struggling through all these matches, and I'm in the finals," Davenport said. "There's no way you can possibly prepare for what happens in Grand Slam tennis any more...When I woke up this morning, I just felt pretty tight all over. My body obviously just played a lot of tennis yesterday, and going back out for the doubles certainly stiffened me up. But it's (left hip) definitely not injured like the US Open. It's definitely a little stiff, but it's not injured."

Davenport, in both the singles and doubles finals, will look to swing freely in the final against Serena and end points quickly.

"I played her last year and beaten her two times, I had lost to her a number of times in a row," Davenport said. "Definitely have seen her play a lot recently, and feel like obviously I have some confidence winning. Before, like I said, I went in with a bad record. I'm going to have to play well and I'm going to have to not let her dictate, and go for shots, you know, have fun doing it. Against a player like that, you know that's what you have to do."

Scheduled Friday is the women's doubles final in the Russian/Aussie combo of (6) Svetlana Kuznetsova/Alicia Molik vs. Americans (15) Lindsay Davenport/Corina Morariu.

Safin Dethrones Federer in Five-Set Marathon at Australian Open

Marat Safin ended the hopes of defending champion Roger Federer in the Australian Open semifinals with a 5-7, 6-4, 5-7, 7-6(6), 9-7 win in a four hour, 25 minute match that stretched into early morning Friday in Melbourne.

Federer delivered 22 aces to Safin's 16, but also had eight doubles faults to the Russian's one. Fans at Rod Laver Arena gave the adversaries a standing ovation, and sang Happy Birthday to Safin.

The Russian clinched the win on his seventh match point of the contest.

Safin moves into the final, reversing last year's decision when he lost to Federer in the championship, and will face the winner of Andy Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt.

"When it's coming the moment, it's a little bit choking," said Safin, who saved a match point in the fourth-set tiebreak. "It's like a brain fight against each other. It's Roger Federer, so already psychologically it's really difficult."

The loss ended a 26-match win streak for Federer, and a 24-match win streak over Top 10 players stretching back to 2003.

TENNIS-X NEWS, NOTES, QUOTES AND BARBS
Serena Williams after beating Maria Sharapova: "I definitely think she's probably looked at me as a reference maybe growing up, which is exciting. I never thought -- I'm so silly. I'd never thought I'd play someone that probably looked up to me." Silly ego, tricks are for kids...Sorry that American viewers missed out on the Federer-Safin match live since ESPN, the World Sports Fishing Leader, thought it more important to rock the tape of the "Redfish Cup" fishing tournament, featuring fat guys emblazoned with advertisements as if they were NASCAR drivers...The always-entertaining Martin Johnson, writing for The Telegraph on Patty Schnyder's coach/husband: "Patty ran off with a middle-aged therapist when she was 19, and informed her parents that -- among his many other talents -- he had discovered a cure for cancer and AIDS. Mr. and Mrs. Schnyder were unconvinced, especially when the therapist turned Patty into a vegan, instructed her to drink three litres of orange juice every day and got her warmed up for matches with a routine that involved applications of hot wax and a rolling pin studded with needles. The parents then employed the services of a private eye to delve a bit deeper into his background, and their delight at learning she'd finally ditched the therapist lasted only as long as the revelation that she'd swapped him for the private eye. They eventually got married, after a short delay while he finished off a jail sentence for fraud, and he's now her personal coach. His qualifications are pretty impressive, having won several small trophies for his prowess as a billiards player. Patty herself is in no doubt that he's the man to take her to the top. "He has never played tennis, but he was really good at billiards and he knows how to help me cope with the big points." With that experience for Patty to call upon, (Nathalie) Dechy shouldn't have had a chance, but somehow Schnyder lost in three sets, 5-7, 6-1, 7-5. Whether or not she was suffering from an overdose of vitamin C, or had simply forgotten her coach's advice to chalk her racket between shots, no one really knows."...ESPN2 will televise the Australian Open semifinal between Andy Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt live at 12:30 a.m. PST Friday morning...Andy Roddick told the LA Times he did not vote in the presidential election...Tennis Week reports that ESPN will broadcast the men's final live in the U.S. if Roger Federer and Andy Roddick are in the championship match.