On a wickedly windy day, with a storm approaching at the pace of one of her sizzling forehands, Serena Williams reached her first US Open final in six years in a blur of outrageous winners. The prize of $1.5 million (about £850,000) for the winner at Flushing Meadows tonight is one tasty morsel, the prospect of becoming world No 1 the other.

What sparked Williams to take out her venom so strongly on Dinara Safina, the French Open finalist, was that she lost the first two games and her pride was bruised. The response was one of the most emphatic of her recent years on this court, a 6-3, 6-2 victory that sets up the 26-year-old American for a meeting with Jelena Jankovic, the Serb making her grand-slam final debut.

It does seem an age since Williams, who also won this title in 1999, relished playing quite so much in front of her home crowd. She was cunning and crafty to defeat Venus, her sister, in the quarter-finals; she was simply far too strong for Safina.

Let no one be in any doubt that Jankovic has earned her chance, for it has taken her more than ten hours to win six matches and the last of them, against Elena Dementieva, was a lot less taxing than she tends to make these things. Jankovic defeated the Olympic gold medal-winner 6-4, 6-4, recovering from a break down in both sets, and rarely has there been a player with better lip-gloss than that which the 23-year-old from Serbia flashed across Arthur Ashe Stadium. Jankovic is not only a drama queen, her make-up is about the best in women’s tennis.

Jankovic and Dementieva are similar in that they left their teens behind a long time ago and yet they still go everywhere with their mothers. Snezana Jankovic is as conscious of her appearance as her daughter; it seems every time the cameras focus on her, she is rearranging her hair. There will be plenty to look good for today.

Dementieva was forlorn, for she had enough opportunities but was undone by Jankovic’s superior consistency, her better use of the HawkEye challenge system and, on the first set point in the first set, enough of a delay of the point to put the Russian off her stroke. Just as Dementieva stepped up to serve, Jankovic asked for the towel for a second time. It could have been construed as gamesmanship and when Dementieva looked up a second time to serve, Jankovic raised a hand.

In the second set, having edged ahead again, Dementieva had a short forehand to lead 4-2, but she fluffed it. The last point of the match was another horrendous forehand miss.