Serena Williams through to the Rogers Cup semi-finals

Serena Williams faces her toughest test to date at this year’s Rogers Cup when she takes on Victoria Azarenka tonight in Toronto.

Williams hasn’t been at her best this week, but she’s got the job done so far to reach the semi-finals, partly thanks to the help of a supportive Toronto crowd, who have been relishing the sight of the 13 time Grand Slam champion in action.

That support has been crucial in the past couple of rounds as the former world number one has battled back from a set down to beat Jie Zheng and Lucie Safarova in the previous rounds.

She found herself in all sorts of trouble against Safarova in the quarter-finals, struggling at times against the powerful left-hander.

Afterwards, she admitted: “Lefties are different too and it took getting used to. I hadn’t played Lucie in a long time. I forgot how she plays, and she’s a great player and doing so well. Once I got used to it, it was better.”

Serena will have to raise her game tonight as Azarenka has been brilliant all week. She double bagelled Canada’s Stephanie Dubois in the second round and has yet to drop more than 3 games in a match.

“She’s the better ranked player and she’s had a fantastic tournament,” admitted Williams.

“She’s a power player. She’s smart, she’s young, she has fresh legs. She has everything going for her right now. And me, I’m just going to do my best.”

However while Azarenka may be playing the better tennis this week, Williams has that all important aura about her and after all the struggles she’s had in the past year, she wants to win this week’s tournament badly.

“I saw her play in Stanford,” Azarenka mused. “She played great. It doesn’t matter if she didn’t play for a year, she’s done it before. She knows how to play tennis.”

Serena has won four of their five matches, with Azarenka’s sole win coming in the Miami final two years ago. As well as she’s playing, it would be brave, borderline foolish, not to back Serena to come through this one.

Source: Crunch Sports