Second seed Jelena Jankovic reached the first Grand Slam final of her career with a straight set victory over fifth seed Elena Dementieva at the 2008 US Open. Final score: 6-4 6-4.

Dementieva broke Jankovic’s serve at the very beginning of their semifinal showdown. However, since Dementieva’s 4-2 lead, Jankovic took four consecutive games to take the first set. Out of the first six games of the second set, four were breaks. After that, the players held their serve, but Jankovic broke Dementieva in the tenth game of the set, scoring on her second match point.

This US Open semifinal was Jankovic’s fifth in a Grand Slam, and the Serb managed to go one step further for the first time. It’s interesting to point out that Jankovic’s first semifinal of a Grand Slam was at this same tournament in 2006.

Judging by how many splits JJ made during today’s match, she’s healthy and ready for her next opponent.

Serena Williams and Dinara Safina will face each other in the other semifinal. (photo: Getty Images)

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I found one really cool set of photos of sisters Venus and Serena Williams practicing before their epic match at the US Open. The photos are chronologically ordered and each one is commented. In this post I'm showing you just some of them.

I find it especially nice that the tennis stars were both accompanied with their partners –  Venus with her fiancé, golfer Hank Kuehne, and Serena with her often-denied boyfriend, rapper Common. Read more »

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Serena Williams won the 17th meeting with her sister Venus, an epic match with a final result 7-6 (8-6) 7-6 (9-7), and moved into the semifinals of the US Open where she’ll face Dinara Safina.

Serena, the fourth seed, suffered an early break of serve, but when serving for the set at 5-3 and 40-15 Venus handed the momentum to Serena. Having already seen two set points go begging in the first set, seventh-seeded Venus wasted a further eight in the second set tie-break.

Serena, who now has 9-8 record against Venus (6-5 in Grand Slams) is looking for her 12th Grand Slam final.

In the other semifinal, Jelena Jankovic and Elena Dementieva will face each other. (source: BBC)

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Sixth seed Dinara Safina advanced to the US Open semifinals with an easy 6-2 6-3 win over 16th seed Flavia Pennetta.

Safina earned a service break in the second game and later broke serve again to close out the first set. In the second, Pennetta broke at love to go up 2-1, but Safina broke right back, and then again for a 4-2 lead. The Russian cruised the rest of the way.

The 22-year-old Safina will play one of the Williams sisters in the semis.

On day eight of the US Open Safina said: "Sometimes, wherever I am, I feel like I have already been there for a year." Hopefully she has overcome that feeling, she will need to be fully rested to overcome her next opponent.

BTW: I really like this quote of Pennetta:

Can you just talk a little bit about your decision this year to really make a big push and to commit to your tennis?

"What decision? I just work a lot. It's not a big decision." We can all learn from this! (source: The New York Times, photo: safina-dinara.com)

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Fifth seed Elena Dementieva eased past 15th seed Patty Schnyder 6-2 6-3 to reach her fourth US Open semifinal.

The Russian broke twice to take the first set. In the second set the Swiss broke back to level at 3-3, but Dementieva broke back again and didn’t lose another game until the end of the match. The gold medalist at the Beijing Olympics Dementieva has now won 11 matches in a row.

In the semifinals Dementieva will play either second seed Jelena Jankovic of Serbia or 29th seed Sybille Bammer of Austria. (source: BBC, photo: Getty Images)

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