Serena beats the heat, rolls past Dementieva into Australian Open final

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Second-seeded Serena Williams advanced to the Australian Open final, beating Elena Dementieva of Russia in straight sets.

With the roof closed at Rod Laver Arena due to outside temperatures of 111 degrees, the American beat the fourth-seeded Dementieva 6-3, 6-4 on Thursday.

Dementieva had a 3-0 lead in the second set before Williams, helped by consecutive double faults by the Russian in the fifth game, won four games in a row. After the pair exchanged service breaks, Williams held her serve to clinch the match.

Williams won the Australian Open in 2003, 2005 and 2007.

No. 3 Dinara Safina played No. 7 Vera Zvonareva in the second semifinal.

In the men’s tournament, there’s a first all-Spanish semifinal.

Top-ranked Rafael Nadal, who finished off a 6-2, 7-5, 7-5 win over No. 6 Gilles Simon on Wednesday as the temperature dipped to 93 from a daytime high of 109 degrees, will meet another Spanish left-hander for a spot in the final after Fernando Verdasco ousted 2008 runner-up Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.

“I think it’s incredible for us,” Nadal said. “One will be in the finals, so we have to be happy with that.”

No Spanish man has won the Australian title. Nadal reached the semifinals last year without dropping a set, but was upset by Tsonga.

He rebounded from that to win the French Open for the fourth straight time, then ended Roger Federer’s five-year reign at Wimbledon and his 237-week stretch at No. 1.

Verdasco had his time in the sun in November, when he guided Spain to victory in the Davis Cup final at Argentina while Nadal was absent, recovering from knee tendinitis.

If he thought the atmosphere was intense in Argentina, he agreed it was stifling in Melbourne. But that hasn’t stopped Verdasco from going past his best previous run of a fourth-round exit at a major.

Wednesday marked the start of what weather forecasters were predicting would be a once-in-a-century heat wave for the city. Hardy trees accustomed to a decade of drought were wilting. Dead or dying moths flopped onto the courts.

Nadal, a Majorca native, was relieved he’d been given a night match, and joked about burning his feet when he went outside to practice earlier in the afternoon.

“Believe me, I never feel the same like today when I was warming up outside,” he said. “The conditions were very hot. I couldn’t walk.”

Federer, seeking a record-equaling 14th Grand Slam singles title to match Pete Sampras’ career record, was playing American Andy Roddick in the night semifinal.

No. 2 Federer, who is 15-2 against Roddick and 6-0 in Grand Slams, lost in the semifinals to Novak Djokovic last year. No. 7 Roddick beat Djokovic in the quarterfinals on Tuesday.

No. 14 Verdasco became the lowest ranked of the semifinalists when he beat Simon and is hoping to replicate Tsonga’s ’08 run.

Nadal owns a 6-0 record against him, including a French Open quarterfinal last year when Verdasco won only three games. But the 22-year-old Nadal has seen vast improvement in Verdasco, who reached the final in Brisbane in a tuneup event and has now won five straight matches on hard courts for the first time.

His five-set win over Andy Murray, considered by many as a tournament favorite after recent wins over Nadal and Federer, grabbed attention.

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