No stopping Henin as Williams crumbles

They say that a good big 'un will always beat a good little 'un, but Justine Henin has spent a professional lifetime defying the odds. The diminutive Belgian gave away 7in in height and 2st 6lb in weight to Venus Williams in the semi-finals of the US Open here last night, but underlined her status as the world's best player with an emphatic 7-6, 6-4 victory. In tonight's final she will play Svetlana Kuznetsova, a 3-6, 6-1, 6-1 winner over Anna Chakvetadze.

Henin, 25, has emerged from a ferociously difficult top half of the draw to reach the 10th final in the last 16 Grand Slam tournaments she has entered. Having overcome Serena Williams in the quarter-finals, she is only the second player to beat the two sisters in the same Grand Slam event, following Martina Hingis at the 2001 Australian Open.

Some of Henin's tennis here over the last fortnight has been of the highest quality and she consistently had the upper hand over Williams, despite two mid-set wobbles.

Henin broke Williams in the opener and then served superbly in her first four service games, dropping only two points. At 5-4 and 40-15 the Belgian had the first set at her mercy, but Williams chased down a stop volley on the first set point and went on to save two more and break back for 5-5.

Williams led for the first time when she won the opening point of the next game after a wonderful 27-shot rally, finished off with a brave drive volley. The set went to a tie-break, which Henin won 7-2, having stamped her authority with a lovely forehand pass down the line on the first point.

The hot and humid conditions seemed to take their toll on both players, Henin taking a medical time-out before the second set and Williams calling for the trainer seven games later after complaining of dizziness. Henin raced into a 3-0 lead, but when Williams fought back to level at 3-3 and then led 0-40 on the Belgian's serve it seemed the tide might have turned.

Williams, however, made a succession of mistakes to hand Henin the game. There were more twists in the tale as both players dropped their next service games, but at 4-5 Williams played another loose game as successive errors on her forehand and backhand gave the Belgian the match.

Henin, the 2003 champion and 2006 beaten finalist here, will start the final as the hottest of favourites, having won 14 of her 16 matches against Kuznetsova, who won this title, her only Grand Slam crown to date, in 2004.

Kuznetsova won her semi-final thanks to an extraordinary collapse by Chakvetadze, who lost 12 of the last 13 games in a match that was littered with errors. Kuznetsova was even worse than Chakvetadze at the start, but the 22-year-old, who will climb to No 2 in the world rankings next week, gradually played her way back into the match.

Chakvetadze, who will rise to a career-best No 5 in the rankings, hit just one winner in the first set but took it thanks to Kuznetsova's 21 unforced errors. She fell apart in the second and although a 10-minute break under the "extreme heat" rule briefly revived her game she then lost the last six games in succession.

Novak Djokovic's remarkable year continued on Thursday night when he beat Carlos Moya 6-4, 7-6, 6-1 to reach the last four of his third successive Grand Slam tournament. In today's semi-finals he meets David Ferrer, while Roger Federer takes on Nikolay Davydenko.

Dan Evans, the last Briton left in the junior competitions, lost his boys' singles quarter-final to Italy's Matteo Trevisan 6-4, 7-5.