Juan Martin del Potro handed Rafael Nadal his worst loss in a major tournament, beating the Spaniard 6-2, 6-2, 6-2 Sunday at the US Open to reach his first Grand Slam final. In the final, pushed to Monday because of rain over the weekend, del Potro will play either the five-time defending champion or Novak Djokovic. “I think this is the best moment of my life,” del Potro said. Nadal was dealing with a strained abdominal muscle, and after the match he finally admitted the obvious – that it was bothering him. The six-time Grand Slam tournament champion also gave plenty of credit to del Potro, who deserved every bit of it after sapping all the life, and hope, out of a player whose relentlessness is one of his biggest attributes. Belgian comeback queen Kim Clijsters knocked out Serena Williams in a wildly controversial finish Saturday to advance to the final of the US Open and become the poster girl for working mothers. Just weeks after returning to the tour from a two-year break to start a family, Clijsters beat the defending champion 6-4 ,7-5 after a day-long rain delay at Flushing Meadows. At 5-6, 15-30 down in the second set, Williams whacked her second serve but the lineswoman called her on a foot-fault that put her at match point down. The American's subsequent expletive-laced tirade directed at the lineswoman resulted in a point penalty – and the end of the match. “I swear ... I'm... going to take this... ball and shove it down your... throat, you hear that? I swear ...,” Williams said. After the line-judge reported the second seed to the umpire for verbal abuse, Williams added: “I never said I would kill you, are you serious?” In Sunday's final, Clijsters will face Danish teenager Caroline Wozniacki, who defeated unseeded and error-prone Belgian Yanina Wickmayer 6-3, 6-3 in the other semifinal. The contentious ending of Clijsters's match marred her well-earned victory. “It's unfortunate that a match that I was playing so well at had to end that way,” said Clijsters, the 2005 Open champion and former world number one. Paes-Dlouhy bag doubles India's Leander Paes and Czech Lukas Dlouhy won the men's doubles title by defeating India's Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles of Bahamas 3-6, 6-3, 6-2. Fourth seeds Paes and Dlouhy claimed their second Grand Slam crown after capturing the French Open title earlier this year. They lost to the US duo of Mike and Bob Bryan in last year's US Open final. Australia's Bernard Tomic won the boys junior title by defeating Chase Buchanan of the United States 6-1, 6-3. The third seed is the first Australian to win the boys' title here since Mark Kratzmann, who defeated Boris Becker in the 1984 final. Britain's Heather Watson won the junior girls' title by defeating Yana Buchina of Russia 6-4, 6-1. The 17-year-old, 11th seed from the Channel Island of Guernsey is the first British player to lift the girls' title in New York. Kramer dies Jack Kramer, a three-time Grand Slam winner and a major US tennis star in the 1940s, died at his Los Angeles home Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. Kramer was 88. Kramer was world number one in the late 1940s, winning the 1947 Wimbledon title and the 1946 and 1947 US championships, forerunner of the US Open. Kramer also captured seven Slam doubles titles, all at Wimbledon or in New York. Kramer, a 1968 inductee into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, retired in 1954 due to arthritis in his back.
