{"id":17727,"date":"2012-10-29T15:42:21","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T19:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=17727"},"modified":"2012-10-29T15:16:40","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T19:16:40","slug":"williams-finishes-off-year-with-wta-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=17727","title":{"rendered":"Williams Finishes Off Year With WTA Title"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ISTANBUL \u2014 Her year filled with titles and trophies over, <strong>Serena Williams<\/strong> can at last admit it: This was a title she had her eye on.<\/p>\n<p>Not that any more evidence of her all-consuming, powerful game was needed, but<strong> Williams<\/strong> gave it anyway. She dismissed <strong>Maria Sharapova<\/strong> 6-4, 6-3 Sunday to win the WTA Championships for the third time and finish the year with another title, but not the top ranking.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow that I can be honest, I really wanted to win,\u201d <strong>Williams <\/strong>said. \u201cI wanted it so bad, but I didn\u2019t want to say it. &#8230; It was really important for me to end the year with this title in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Williams<\/strong> ended the year with a 59-4 record and seven titles. Since her first-round loss at the French Open, she is 31-1, winning Wimbledon, the Olympic gold medal and the U.S. Open. The 31-year-old <strong>Williams<\/strong> became the oldest player to capture the year-end championships. But she will finish the year ranked No. 3, behind No. 1 <strong>Victoria Azarenka<\/strong> and No. 2 <strong>Sharapova<\/strong>, because she did not play as well in the first half of the year. <strong>Azarenka<\/strong> lost to <strong>Sharapova<\/strong> in the semifinals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had such a good year, it was important to end on a good note,\u201d <strong>Williams<\/strong> said. \u201cIt was good for my sanity to win. I really wanted it although I didn\u2019t need it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ISTANBUL \u2014 Her year filled with titles and trophies over, Serena Williams can at last admit it: This was a title she had her eye on. Not that any more evidence of her all-consuming, powerful game was needed, but Williams gave it anyway. She dismissed Maria Sharapova 6-4, 6-3 Sunday to win the WTA Championships [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}