FanHouse Jelena Jankovic

DOHA, Qatar (AP) -- Serena Williams said she didn't arrive at the Sony Ericsson Championships expecting to win.

Plenty of other people did that for her.

Williams bested big sister Venus again Sunday, winning 6-2, 7-6 (4) in the season-ending tournament for her third victory of the season. Williams also won Wimbledon and the Australian Open, and clinched the year-end No. ranking earlier in the week.

"It feels great," said Serena, who also won the WTA Tour's season-ending event in 2001. "I totally didn't expect to come here and win."

DOHA, Qatar (AP) -- The Williams sisters will end their season with another title matchup.

Venus Williams defeated Jelena Jankovic 5-7, 6-3, 6-4 Saturday in one semifinal at the Sony Ericsson Championships. Serena Williams won the other when Caroline Wozniacki quit because of an abdominal injury while trailing 6-4, 0-1.

Serena, who secured the year-end No. 1 ranking this week, is returning to the final of the WTA Tour's season-ending championships for the first time since 2004. She was knocked out in the group stage the last two years, but was the only player to go undefeated through the round-robin rounds this time.

She threatened a player, didn't try most of the year, famously threatened a line judge and was thrown out of a match.

The other thing Serena Williams did in 2009 was this:

She won the year-end No. 1 ranking. It became official Wednesday in Doha, Qatar, at the WTA Championships when Dinara Safina, the current No. 1 Williams was trying to overcome, withdrew from the tournament with a bad back. It guaranteed that Williams would finish the year No. 1 for the first time since 2002.

Two more things: She deserves it.

And it's the best thing for tennis.

---

---

TOKYO (AP) -- Maria Sharapova won her first tournament since returning from a 10-month injury layoff when Jelena Jankovic retired because of an arm injury in the first set of the Toray Pan Pacific final Saturday

Sharapova was up 5-2 at Ariake Colosseum when the seventh-seeded Serb took a timeout to have her right arm examined by the trainer. Jankovic returned to the court and lost the first two points of the eighth game before retiring.

"It's disappointing," said Sharapova, who had arthroscopic surgery to repair a rotator cuff in her right shoulder nearly a year ago. "It's toward the end of the year and there are a lot of injuries so I wish Jelena a speedy recovery."

TOKYO (AP) -- Maria Sharapova recovered from a slow start Wednesday to advance to the quarterfinals of the Toray Pan Pacific Open with a 2-6, 6-2, 6-2 win over compatriot Alisa Kleybanova.

The former top-ranked Russian, who has been struggling since returning from a 10-month injury layoff, will face Iveta Benesova of the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals on Thursday. Benesova defeated Taiwan's Chang Kai-chan 7-5, 6-2.

Sharapova, 25th in the world rankings, took control of the match in the second set when she broke Kleybanova three times to open up a 5-0 lead. Kleybanova broke back in the sixth game and held before Sharapova served to win the set.

NEW YORK -- At one point late in the match, you could see it. Jelena Jankovic turned to the back of the court and covered her face with her hands for no apparent reason. But it was only after she lost Thursday in the second round of the U.S. Open, that Jankovic let on that she was playing after finding out her grandmother had died.

"You could see I was not happy on the court," she said. "I was really suffering. I tried to think about my tennis but, you know, I felt like I was so late and so slow.

"You know, I couldn't even watch the ball."

---

---

Jelena Jankovic became the second highly seeded player on the women's side to be eliminated on Thursday, after losing 3-6, 7-6, 6-7 to Yaroslova Shvedova.

Down 5-6 in the third set, No. 5 seeded Jankovic was able to break Shvedova, who was serving for the match, to force a decisive tiebreak.

Despite Jankovic's two match points in the tiebreak, Shvedova battled back and won four straight points. Jankovic was unable to hold her serve at 6-6 and the upset was complete with a Shvedova ace on the next point.

---

---

Andy Roddick says his door is always open to young American tennis players, but no one asks for advice. Venus Williams said she would like to see some other American women arrive. At this point, American tennis is defined by a couple of stars and cliff.

So that's why Saturday was a big moment for USA tennis, when 17-year old Melanie Oudin of Georgia, in her first Wimbledon, beat No. 6 seed Jelena Jankovic 6-7 (10-8), 7-5, 6-2 to advance to the fourth round.

"Super good news,'' Venus said after her match, another victory.

Is Oudin the next big American star?

WIMBLEDON, England (AP) -- As a tyke growing up in Marietta, Ga., Melanie Oudin would watch Venus and Serena Williams on TV and tell anyone who would listen that she was going to play at Wimbledon, too, one day.

Who knew she'd be right? And do so well, so quickly?

Making her Wimbledon debut at age 17 after getting through qualifying, the 124th-ranked Oudin joined the Williams sisters in the fourth round at the All England Club by beating former No. 1 Jelena Jankovic 6-7 (8), 7-5, 6-2 Saturday in the most startling result of the tournament's opening week.

---

---

They had to gang up on Rafael Nadal. It was a tag-team effort in Madrid: First, Novak Djokovic softened him up with a four-hour death match. Nadal won. The next day, Roger Federer cleaned up on a tired Nadal with a sore knee.

But the point is, Nadal did fall on clay. It can be done! No one knew that for sure.

So we start the French Open on Sunday, the year's second major. Nadal has won it four years in a row. Can he be stopped now?