Serena Williams reached her fifth Australian Open final with a battling win over China’s Li Na.

It was a trademark gritty performance from Serena who was far from her best but found a way when it mattered in contrast to her sister Venus who frittered away chance after chance in her quarter-final loss to Li Na.

Serena is not in 100% physical condition with ankle, wrist, thigh and calf strappings and her movement was noticeably limited during the match but she did enough for a 7-6, 7-6 win.
Serena began strongly breaking early on but was struggling to find much rhythm from the baseline and became increasingly frustrated as the first set headed for a tiebreak. However she clinched it 7-4 with the help of some strong serving.

The second set was more of the same with Serena getting away and then being pegged back by the dogged Li Na who saved four match points to push it to another tiebreak.
This was far more straightforward with Serena racing through 7-1, sealing the win with her twelth ace.

 "I am happy I was able to pull it out, it was really close," Williams said afterwards. "I wasn't at my best today but I'm still here - which is shocking - and I'm just going to do whatever I can to stay."

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