Kim Clijsters will be too much for Li Na in Aussie women’s final

The Australian Open women’s final is set in Melbourne after Thursday’s semifinals, and we could see history on Saturday when No. 9 see Li Na of China faces No. 3 seed and pre-tournament favorite Kim Clijsters of Belgium.

Li is the first Chinese player to advance to the final of a major championship, and she would become the first Asian – male or female – to win a Grand Slam title. At 28, Li was least-ranked of the semifinalists, the oldest and the only non-European. Li had to overcome a match point against top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki in her semifinal in winning 3-6, 7-5, 6-3. Li really came into the tennis consciousness last year at this tournament when Li only began to form in the Australian tennis consciousness last year when she came from a set and a break behind Venus Williams to win a quarterfinal, then lost to eventual champion Serena in a semi in two tiebreak sets.

Li is unbeaten in 11 matches this year, as she won a warm-up tournament in Sydney by beating Clijsters in the final. Li returned to tennis in 2004, after spending two years in college in a media-studies program. She took the rare step of breaking away from the state-run sports system in 2008 and hired her own coach. At the end of the 2010 season, she replaced former coach Thomas Hogstedt with her husband, Jiang Shan. Certainly her success could lift Chinese tennis to new heights as the sport is really in its infancy there.

Clijsters is a three-time Grand Slam champion, but all three have come at the U.S. Open. She dominated Vera Zvonareva in straight sets 6-3, 6-3 on Thursday to advance into her second consecutive Grand Slam final – she beat Zvonareva in the final of last year’s U.S. Open. The 27-year-old Clijsters won 77 percent of her first-serve points and was broken only once in the match. Zvonareva, on the other hand, was broken four times. It’s the second Aussie Open quarterfinal for Clijsters; she lost the championship match in 2004 to countrywoman Justine Henin, who retired from tennis this week.

Clijsters has opened as the -300 favorite with Li at +220. The big stage probably will be too much for Li as she is carrying the weight of a country on her shoulders, while this is old hat for Clijsters. Saturday’s final will be the sixth meeting between the two. Li won that most recent match a few weeks ago in Sydney, and this will be the third time the two have played in a Grand Slam match. Clijsters beat Li both times in quarterfinal matches, once in 2006 at Wimbledon and the other at the 2009 U.S. Open.

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