Serena beats Clijsters to win back Princess Cup

Tokyo:

World number one Serena Williams moved up a gear at the right moment to beat in-form Kim Clijsters and win back the singles title in the Princess Cup final today. Playing in her first tournament since snatching a third straight Grand Slam title at the US Open, Williams had to dig deep to recover from one set down for a 2-6 6-3 6-3 victory over the Belgian third seed. The match was interrupted twice - first after the five-minute warm-up due to rain, when the roof was closed, and then for 30 minutes by lighting failure when Clijsters was leading 2-0. Clijsters, girlfriend of world no 1 Lleyton Hewitt, appeared more focussed in the early stages, combining angled returns with hard-hit groundstrokes to break the first and third games. Williams hit an awesome smash at 30-40 to break back in the sixth, but Clijsters fired a marvellous service return winner and then forced Williams to misfire a backhand before taking the set.(PTI)