Dinara Safina has a genuine chance of avenging her loss to fellow Russian Elena Dementieva at the Beijing Olympics final, atleast on paper, when the two women battle it out in the finals of the Medibank International Tennis tournament.

Safina secured her place in the finals with the victory over doubles specialist Ai Sugiyama 6-4, 7-6(3), in what turned out to be a more competetive match than the much hyped encounter between top seed Serena Williams and third seed Elena Dementieva. The fact that Dementieva had won the three previous meetings from the American also made the thursday's semifinal very interesting. But the weary Ms. Williams lost the match rather tamely 6-3, 6-1 in just 68 minutes.

"I gave it away more than anything," said Serena, who accepted the brilliant form of the Olympic gold medallist without any excuses. "I made a lot of errors and made her look like a champ, really. I just pretty much gave her the match."

Williams had survived early scares from Samantha Stosur and Caroline Wozniacki, when she saved four and three match points respectively to get past those thrillers. The younger Williams did not look disappointed though- "It was good to have a few matches under my belt getting ready for Melbourne,I feel like I'm going to play a lot better than what I did this week. My main goal, obviously, is to go to Melbourne and do the best that I can do."

Safina, who seemed more than excited about the finals on friday with Dementieva said- "It's just about who will play better tomorrow, You can't really play tactically against the top players. You have to go out there and just play your game. How can you change your tactics when they have no weakness?"

Dementieva will be gunning for her second consecutive title victory, taking her chances at the Aussie open to a new high.

Doubles arena witnessed the upset of the tournament when top seeds and world champion Cara Black and Liezel Huber were beaten by Nathalie Dechy and Casey Dellacqua in a thrilling 7-6(2), 1-6, 10-5 encounter. Their opponents in the final are Hsieh Su-Wei and Peng Shuai who got the better of Nuria Llagostera Vives and María José Martínez Sánchez 6-2, 6-1.

Two of the quarterfinals matches on the men's side also gave expected results when top seeds and Wild card entrant Novak Djokovic beat Croat Mario Ancic 6-3, 6-4 in a rain delayed match. The result of the last quarterfinal of the day between Jo-Wilfred Tsonga and Jarkko Neimenen was decided when Frenchman Tsonga pulled out of the tournament with a back injury.

Earlier in the day, fourth seed David Nalbandian also had quite a work out in an otherwise straight sets win over four time former champion Lleyton Hewitt. The first set saw an exchange of breaks between both the players, but eventually it was the Argentinian who excelled in the tie break to take the first set. The second set proved to be a flop show by Hewitt, when he finally got his serve broken by Nalbandian to give away the match 7-6(3), 7-5.