Another title for Serena

CINCINNATI. – Serena Williams continued to work her way up the list of WTA tennis legends, winning her 69th career title with a straight-set win over Simona Halep at the WTA Cincinnati tournament on Sunday.

The world number one claimed her second straight Cincinnati trophy and moved past Aussie legend Evonne Goolagong into fifth place in the all-time WTA win list in the Open Era. Martina Navratilova heads the list with 167 singles crowns. The 33-year-old American rallied past third seed Halep 6-3, 7-6 (7/5) on Sunday for her fifth title of 2015.

“I think that playing Simona really tested me, and I felt like I was up for the challenge and up for the test,” Williams said.

“I definitely feel there is room for improvement.”

Roger Federer also moved into pole position for a US Open title run on Sunday, capturing his seventh Cincinnati Masters with a dominant 7-6 (7/1), 6-3 win over Novak Djokovic. The 34-year-old Swiss star added the Serbian world number one to a victims’ list which included Andy Murray in the semi-finals, capping a near-perfect week for the 17-time Grand Slam winner.

Federer was playing his first tournament since falling to Djokovic in the Wimbledon final. He passed up the Montreal Masters won by Murray last week, preferring to rest and prepare at home.

“It’s great, I didn’t expect it, to be quite honest. I knew I had a chance, but I still felt more guys were going to have a better shot than I had because they had played Montreal before,” Federer said.

“Usually that helps. But I’ve realized over all the years that it’s just really difficult to win back-to-back Montreal and Cincinnati, or Toronto and Cincinnati.

“I chose to roll the dice a little bit and see how things were going to go. If they went great here then it was a great plan.

“If not, I was going to go back and practice and be really motivated for the US Open to start.”

The gamble paid off for Federer, who needed 90 minutes to subdue Djokovic.

Meanwhile, Halep, who handed Williams one of the worst losses of her career at the 2014 WTA Finals in Singapore, surpassed Maria Sharapova as the second ranked player in the new world rankings yesterday. – AFP.