After the elder Williams sister pulled out of the tournament with an autoimmune disease, Irena Falconi had her second round match moved from Court 11 to Arthur Ashe Stadium and the 21 year-old New Yorker seized the opportunity.

“When I walked in,” she said, “I was trying to distract everyone that I was drinking water, but I was looking at my environment and really just adapting to what was about to happen. Yeah, I definitely took a second to really look at my surroundings.”

But in the end the young American came through against 14^th seed Dominika Cibilkova , 2-6 6-3 7-5.

It was the thrill of a lifetime for the 78^th ranked Falconi, who started waving an American flag after her win.

“It was totally out of instinct,” she said.  “I have the flag in my bag.  It’s a good luck flag that was given to me by my trainer, Kim Wilson.  I really felt that it couldn’t have been a more perfect time.”

And maybe Falconi is coming along at the perfect time. So much has been said about the slump American tennis is suffering through that someone like Falconi could easily fill the void. Like Christina McHale this year and Melanie Oudin a few years ago, she can be an up and comer for the US circuit.

It’s something she knows and is sure to tell everyone who listens.

“I’ve heard so much about media talking about American tennis, and I really wanted to portray that there’s a huge wave of American players,” she said.  “I have an American coach and trainer, Jeff and Kim Wilson.

“I strongly believe in all that is USA, and I wanted to represent it and show the world that it’s coming.  It’s coming.  No need to wait any longer.”

If you look at Falconi, she doesn’t look like a typical tennis player. Actually she looks more like your little sister or the girl next door. At 5’4’’, she has thought to have been too short and not the right shape to compete at competitive tennis at a high level. And the braces on her teeth make her look like she’s 15 rather than the legal drinking age.

But all of this drives the Ecuadorian native.  She didn’t come from tremendous means with her parents immigrating to the Washington Heights, NY in 1993. And then she moved to Florida in 2004 to perfect her game.

Now just seven years later, the sky’s the limit for this young girl.

“I don’t really think there’s a limit,” Falconi said.  “I’ve been told that I’m 5’4″, in case you didn’t know.  One thing I did go in there today knowing was that I was taller than my opponent, which was huge.

“I know Justine Henin, she was 5’6″ and she was 1 in the world.  I know for a fact if she can do it, why not?”

That’s a question every woman is asking in this Open. Why not? With seeded players getting knocked out all over the place today this may be a year when an up and comer just happens to win the Open.

“Tournament’s not over yet.” she said, “There’s still five other matches to be won.  There’s still doubles and mixed.  So this is definitely a fortnight.  It’s not over yet.  I’m just so excited.  My team and I are just so excited for what’s to come.”

With an attitude like that, Venus may not be the only player she replaces this week.

Just two weeks removed from the playing the biggest match of her life on Arthur Ashe Stadium against Venus
Williams in the second round of the U.S. Open, Marino is making headlines again after ousting world no. 14
Marion Bartoli of France 6-1, 6-3 to reach her first WTA quarter-final. The win is also her first over a Top 20
player.

“This was one of the best matches of my life,” Marino said. “She’s the highest-ranked player I’ve ever beaten. I want to be playing at this level, competing against – and winning – against these players. I have put a lot of work in and maybe this is a reward for that.”

Marino served 10 aces and lost only 18 points on serve in the 75 minute match. The 19-year-old also broke
Bartoli’s serve four times in six attempts. She will face American Bethanie Mattek-Sands in Friday’s quarterfinals.

With the victory, Marino becomes only the second Canadian to beat a Top 15 player in the last 10 years.
Aleksandra Wozniak has accomplished the feat four times in that span.

“Rebecca gave me absolutely no chance,” Bartoli remarked after the match. “If she plays like that every day she can be Top 20, Top 10 even. I felt she could put the ball wherever she wanted to and I had no chance to win the match with her playing like that. She served well; there was so much pressure for me to hold my serve.”

Marino’s compatriots Stéphanie Dubois (Laval, QC) and Valérie Tétreault (St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC) will
attempt to join her in the final eight when they take over Centre Court tonight at PEPS on the campus of Laval University for their second round matches. Tétreault will begin proceedings during Thursday’s evening session against American Christina McHale followed by Dubois who will take on another American in Alexa Glatch. Both Canadians upset seeded players in their opening matches.

For all of the latest news and results from the Bell Challenge, visit the tournament’s official website
www.challengebell.com.

Dubois, Marino and Tétreault will headline an impressive player field at the $50,000 Saguenay National Bank
Challenger which is set to get underway on Saturday in Saguenay with the qualifying rounds.

About Tennis Canada
Founded in 1890, Tennis Canada is a non-profit, national sport association responsible for leading the growth, promotion and showcasing of tennis in Canada. Tennis Canada owns and operates two of the premier events on the ATP and Sony Ericsson WTA Tours; Rogers Cup men’s and women’s events that rotate annually between Rexall Centre in Toronto and Uniprix Stadium in Montreal. In addition, Tennis Canada owns and operates six professional ITF sanctioned events and financially supports six other professional tournaments in Canada.

Tennis Canada operates national training centres at the Centre of Excellence in Toronto and at Uniprix Stadium in Montreal. Tennis Canada is a proud member of the International Tennis Federation, the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Canadian Paralympics Committee and the International Wheelchair Tennis Association, and serves to administer, sponsor and select the teams for Davis Cup, Fed Cup, the Olympic Games and all wheelchair, junior and senior national teams. Tennis Canada invests its surplus into tennis development. For more information on Tennis Canada please visit our Web site at: www.tenniscanada.com.

1 Serena Williams (USA) 6995.00pts

2 Caroline Wozniacki (Den) 5910.00

3 Venus Williams (USA) 5796.00

4 Vera Zvonareva (Rus) 5550.00

5 Kim Clijsters (Bel) 5325.00

6 Jelena Jankovic (Ser) 5205.00

7 Samantha Stosur (Aus) 4950.00

8 Francesca Schiavone (Ita) 4670.00

9 Agnieszka Radwanska (Pol) 3995.00

10 Elena Dementieva (Rus) 3945.00

11 Victoria Azarenka (Blr) 3715.00

12 Na Li (Chn) 3520.00

13 Svetlana Kuznetsova (Rus) 3516.00

14 Marion Bartoli (Fra) 3455.00

15 Maria Sharapova (Rus) 3450.00

16 Justine Henin (Bel) 3415.00

17 Shahar Peer (Isr) 3295.00

18 Aravane Rezai (Fra) 3100.00

19 Nadia Petrova (Rus) 3070.00

20 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (Rus) 2780.00

New York, NY-USA

August 30-September 12, 2010

$22,668,000/Grand Slam

Hard/Outdoors

Friday, September 10, 2010

Singles – Semifinals

(7) Vera Zvonareva (RUS) d. (1) Caroline Wozniacki (DEN) 64 63

(2) Kim Clijsters (BEL) d. (3) Venus Williams (USA) 46 76(2) 64

Doubles – Semifinals

(2) Huber/Petrova (USA/RUs) d. (7) Chan/Zheng (TPE/CHN) 63 62

Lofting a looping topspin lob into the wind, Clijsters watched the ball sail over Williams’ outstretched Wilson racquet and land a few feet inside the baseline, earning her the crucial break and a 5-4 lead.

Exploring every stroke in her shot spectrum, Clijsters served out a tense 4-6, 7-6(2), 6-4 conquest of Williams in a rollercoaster of a wildly windy match to advance to her fourth US Open final in her last four Flushing Meadows appearances.

“I thought as long as I keep trying, I have to make one,” Clijsters said of the lob. “It’s instinct. You decide to do that and it works. It was an important point and I’m happy to get through. You can put a little bit more behind it because I was against the wind.”

It was Clijsters’ 20th consecutive US Open victory, tying her with Martina Navratilova, Monica Seles and Venus for the second-longest US Open winning streak in the Open Era.

“It obviously means a lot to be in the final and to give myself a chance to defend my my title from last year. It’s a great opportunity,” Clijsters said. “I think today was probably one of the best matches that I’ve played throughout the tournament. I was able to raise my level, and that’s probably what I’m most please about is obviously I was able to win a close match like this, but that I was able to kind of rise to the occasion when I had to.”

It was the 13th meeting between Venus and Clijsters, who has won five in a row to take a 7-6 lead in the head-to-head series. Tennis’ top working mom denied Williams’ quest to return to the US Open final for the first time since 2002. Williams entered the Open without playing a single match during the US Open Series yet came within a few points of navigating her way to the final.

“I definitely feel like I’ll be back next year. This is what I do, and I feel like I played great tennis even with minimal preparation,” Venus said. “Obviously I would have liked to win this match and be playing tomorrow.  I may have lost the match, but that’s just this match.  There will be others.”

Serena Williams, looking champion chic in Venus’ support box, sat this Open out and in Serena’s absence Clijsters is the best hard-court player in the world, in part because she’s the most balanced offensively and defensively. Then there’s the fact she’s always been at her best on North American hard-courts. When she stormed to her first career Grand Slam title at the 2005 US Open, Clijsters simply wore out Williams in rallying for a 4-6, 7-5, 6-1 quarterfinal victory, and posted a 36-1 record on American hard courts that year.

“I always feel good here so I know that if I play good tennis and if I can give myself an opportunity to get into that second week and play those big matches, I mean this is where I’ve played some of the best tennis that I’ve ever played,” Clijsters said. “So if I can give myself those opportunities to play these kind of matches and not get surprised by opponents in the beginning of the tournament, then anything is possible.”

The second-seeded Clijsters will carry a 5-2 career record into tomorrow night’s final against Vera Zvonareva. But Zvonareva has the game to pose problems for the two-time champion as evidenced by the fact she’s won their last two meetings. Zvonareva surprised Clijsters, 3-6, 6-4, 6-2 in the Wimbledon quarterfinals in June then grounded a slightly hobbled Clijsters, who suffered a leg strain, 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 in last month’s Montreal quarterfinals.

A Wimbledon finalist in singles and doubles, Zvonareva doesn’t have one overwhelming weapon, but she can hit any shot from any position on the court and showcased her net skills in today’s first semifinal.

“She’s a very, very tough opponent. Obviously, I’ve lost my last two matches with her,” Clijsters said. “She’s a player who doesn’t give you much. It’s not that she has a game that’s very unpredictable, but what she does, she does extremely well. It’s gonna be a lot different match than it was today. She has a really good backhand and she’s been serving a lot better in the last few months.”

The seventh-seeded Russian surrendered serve just once in scoring a stirring 6-4, 6-3 victory over top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki to advance to her second consecutive Grand Slam final.

Zvonareva snapped Wozniacki’s 13-match winning streak by playing with purpose and passion in persistently pushing the 2009 US Open finalist into defensive positions on the court.

“Any match with Kim will come down to the tough challenge,” Zvonareva said. “She’s a great mover on the court.  She has a lot of experience.  She won here last year. You know, it’s going to be tough. We played a couple of matches for the past couple of months, but those matches are in the past.”

Williams missed the entire US Open Series while recovering from a knee injury. Her court appearances were confined to World TeamTennis, a few clinics and a book signing appearance at the Los Angeles tournament. Though she was short on match play, Williams wields an abundance of experience, a whipping 120 mph first serve and wisely acted on the fact she could not grind with Clijsters today. Her best shot was moving forward and pressuring the reigning champion.

Pressure, the tormenting winds and Clijsters’ unrelenting pursuit of every ball created a cocktail of torture for Williams in the tiebreaker as she hit two of her seven double faults in the break then badly bungled an easy overhead to fall behind 1-5. Banging a backhand into the net, Williams handled Clijsters five set points and she closed the set in 62 minutes.

“Obviously in the tie break I wasn’t able to play as well as I wanted,” Williams said. “I had too many errors, and she played some good tennis”

Clijsters saved a break point in her opening service game of the final set. She broke for a 2-1 lead when Williams buried a backhand into the net.

Serving at 4-3,Clijsters unravaled in committing two double faults. She had a clear look at the open court but slapped a swinging forehand volley four feet long to hand back the break and it was 4-all.

Father Richard Williams was gnawing nervously on a toothpick as his daughter tried to consolidate the break only to see Venus victmized when Clijsters rode the current of the blustery breeze with two  running rainbow lobs that lit up the murky sky. Stabbing a stretch backhand lob in the corner, Clijsters hammered a forehand winner down the line and when Venus double faulted beyond the box, Clijsters had double break point.

Staying true to her game plan, Williams did the right thing and attacked net behind a vicious forehand, but did not do enough with the forehand volley and paused momentarily to watch that shot land. That’s when Clijsters, hitting against the wind, went airborne with the lob that broke Williams’ serve and shattered her hopes in the process.

“I felt like I was trying to be aggressive in that game, and I came in you know, three out of five points.  Unfortunately it didn’t work for me,” Williams said. “She was playing against the wind, so it just blows the ball back in.  There’s not so much I could do on those points.  It was kind of a little bit of bad luck for me. You know, she just played to win.”

A Clijsters’ win in tomorrow’s 7 p.m. final would make her the first woman to successfully defend the Open since Venus did it in 2001.

Rich Pagliaro is the editor of TennisNow.com.

“Mary Joe has done a tremendous job in her first two years as U.S. Fed Cup captain,” said Lucy S. Garvin, Chairman of the Board and President, USTA.  “She has created a team atmosphere that has paid dividends, and the results are indisputable.  Mary Joe has also been able to involve some of our most promising young players, paving the road for continued success in the years to come.”

Fernandez will attempt to lead the U.S. to its first Fed Cup title since 2000 when the U.S. hosts Italy in San Diego, November 6-7.  The U.S. also faced Italy in last year’s final in Reggio Calabria, Italy, losing 4-0.  World No. 1 Serena Williams and world No. 4 Venus Williams have committed to represent the U.S. in the final, joining the core U.S. Fed Cup group of Melanie Oudin, Bethanie Mattek-Sands and world No. 1 doubles player and 2010 US Open mixed doubles champion Liezel Huber.

This year will mark the first time the Fed Cup Final has been played in the United States since 2000, when the U.S. won its record 17^th Fed Cup title.

Fed Cup by BNP Paribas is the world’s largest annual international women’s team competition, with 87 countries competing this year.  For more information, including access to U.S. player and historical Fed Cup records, please go to www.usta.com/fedcup.

Wilson is the official tennis ball of the U.S. Fed Cup team.

New York, NY-USA

August 30-September 12, 2010

$22,668,000/Grand Slam

Hard/Outdoors

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Singles – Quarterfinals

(2) Kim Clijsters (BEL) d. (5) Samantha Stosur (AUS) 64 57 63

(3) Venus Williams (USA) d. (6) Francesca Schiavone (ITA) 76(5) 64

Doubles – Quarterfinals

(6) King/Shvedova (USA/KAZ) d. (1) Dulko/Pennetta (ARG/ITA) 63 63

(9) Black/Rodionova (ZIM/AUS) d. (14) Vesnina/Zvonareva (RUS/RUS) 46 75 64

“I’m a pro at waiting for my match,” she said. “Singles, doubles, you name it, I’ve waited.  I’ve waited for rain delays.  That’s a part of tennis.  You know, there is no certain time that the match before you will end, especially like a match like that.

“So you have to expect that maybe it will go long.  I’m a pretty laid‑back person, so I don’t get too tight waiting.”

It showed today, as the No. 3 seed moved onto the Semifinals with a 7-6 6-4 win over No. 6 seed and French Open Champion Francesca Schiavone.

Actually, waiting was just part of the story, when the match started, both players had to deal with the strong swirling winds that have been affecting play during this open. Williams thought it affected her serve a little, but at the same time, it also affected Schiavone.

“I thought, Oh, my god, what are we in for today?” Williams said.  “I’m a strong player and I hit hard, but I felt like I had nothing.  I felt like I was just hitting against…

“So it was challenging.  I don’t think either of us were able to play our exact normal game because it was just hard to make a choice in the wind.  I think you end up playing a little safer, more toward the center of the court.

“But I feel like when the stakes were higher I was able to raise my game.  She did, too.  She played some great points.  She’s just so feisty that you have to kind of keep her at bay.”

Despite a now an 0-8 record against Williams, Schiavone said she liked playing Venus, because “I play different ball,” she said. “I push her in defense; I don’t give her the chance to play how she want, so every time I think we have a big fight.”

After getting the first set to a tiebreak, Schiavone was also able to fight back reeling off four straight points after being down 0-4. Ultimately, though Williams prevailed in the set and then was able to easily win the second for the match.

“I think I just started finding a little bit better rhythm in the second set,” Williams said.  “It’s not easy to find a rhythm in that kind of weather, but I was trying.  Just trying to get on top of it.

“And, you know, at the end it still was a break to win the match.  But, you know, sometimes she was like shanking, too, and it would just go in.  It was like, Will one of these please go out?

“It just shows the quality.  Like she could still not hit in the middle of the racquet and still make a play.  So it was good.”

And also worth the wait.

And her work showed tonight at Arthur Ashe Stadium when she debuted a new outfit designed for the US Open designed by her company EleVen Designs.

“So far this year my outfits have been based off of cities that I play in,” Williams said after beating Mandy Minella, 6-2 6-1.  “This outfit was really about New York.  It’s firework bursts actually on the dress.  It’s like bursts of fireworks.  It’s about a celebration of me playing my best obviously at home and kind of doing what I love and being able to wear something fun while I do it.

“So just always trying to do something fun on the court.”

It probably was also fun to see her sister Serena in the stands. After bowing out of the Open with a foot injury, the younger Williams sister made her first appearance here, yet no one knows if this will be just a cameo or a regular thing.

“Of course, I’ve had her there so many matches,” she said.  “It was good to see her tonight.  Usually we’re at the tournament together.  This year is an exception, but always good to have her back.”

With such a wide open tournament on the women’s side, it will be interesting to see if Venus can win her first major since Wimbledon in 2008 and her first US Open since going back to back in 2000 and 2001.

But first things first, she needs to just win her matches, which is not as easy as it sounds. Williams will face No. 16 seed Shahar Pe’er in the fourth round, where the matches just get a little tougher. And even though both Williams sisters enjoy a 10-0 record against Pe’er, including Venus’s 6-3 6-0 win on Madrid back in May.

“Yeah, obviously she played a good match, and the first seed that I’ll have the opportunity to play,” Williams said.  “We’ve had a lot of good matches in the past.  I think one of the best matches in her career was against Serena ‑ that I watched.  So I know she has the talent to do something big.  She already has in her career.

“I want to just get out there and execute my game to the point where I get to that next round.”

And that’s what we are seeing from Venus. In past years, sometimes questions arose on her commitment to the game. Now see looks very focused, especially with Serena on the sidelines. The only question is her health and if the left knee, which made her miss the whole US Open Series will hold up.

To that there’s no problem, in fact she doesn’t feel any rust.

“Obviously, you know, just kind of about making the play,” she said. “My concern is always to be able to make the play and to play the level that I’m used to. So of course, you know, it’s something you think about.  But my whole thing was to try to bank on my experience, which so far is working.”

As was that dress.