Wozniacki must beat Williams to silence doubters

Wozniacki is the current top-ranked player but the jury is out on whether she really is the best player in the world as she has yet to win a grand slam title.

The 21-year-old Dane has been pestered about her right to the No 1 status for most of the past year and bristles at the suggestion she does not deserve the ranking.

“I don’t care what people think and say or do,” she said. “I’m number one in the world at the moment and I’ve been playing well and I have had a great year.”

Wozniacki has dropped one set all tournament and now gets a chance for vindication.

Williams is unchallenged as the greatest player of her generation and one of the finest to grace the game.

The American has 13 grand slam titles, including three US Opens, but her ranking has tumbled to 29 given an 11-month lay-off because of health problems.

She has won each of her matches at Flushing Meadows in straight sets so far but still has a point to prove after leaving her last US Open appearance two years ago with a foul-mouthed tirade against a lineswoman.

Williams has won her two previous meetings with Wozniacki, but they offer few real guidelines as she needed a third-set tiebreak in Sydney in 2009 while the Dane retired hurt from their meeting at the Tour Championships two years ago.

The winner will almost certainly enter tomorrow’s final as favourite, since the bottom half of the draw produced two surprising semi-finalists in Australia’s Sam Stosur and unseeded German Angelique Kerber.

Neither has won a grand slam singles title, although Stosur made the French Open final last year – losing to Francesca Schiavone – and is one of the few players in the women’s game with the power to match Williams.

Kerber, ranked 92nd in the world, has slipped through the draw almost unnoticed.

She had never been past the third round of a grand slam event before this week and has never won a WTA Tour title but beat two seeds, including Italy’s Flavia Pennetta, to get to the semis.