I know, I know. It is not yet time to compare Sania to the world #6. But I happened to catch the last set of the quarter final between Dementieva and Davenport and realized that Dementieva’s second serve was worse than Sania’s. In fact, she was so defensive that sometimes in the third set, her first serve was also looking pathetic. She was just slicing the serve in and wait for Davenport to hit a bad return.

But one big difference between her and Sania is that Sania did not have consistent ground strokes. Dementieva was solid on the ground, irrespective of the first serve, second serve or return of serve. That put Davenport on the backfoot in pretty much every rally, and won the match for Dementieva.

So there is a slight chance that it could be an all-Russian final after all. I was just wondering on the way back home today that from the last year’s 3 Russian winners in 4 Grand Slams, we’ve had 0 so far. The US Open gives the Russian contingent some hope.