The only other time the eighth-seeded Granollers won on the ATP tour was in 2008 in Houston. He is the seventh different Spanish player to win a tournament on the tour this season.

Granollers is ranked 45th and is set to rise above his career-best No. 41 in Monday’s rankings. Verdasco, seeded fourth and ranked No. 20, has not won a tournament this year.

Granollers broke serve in the opening game at Roy Emerson Arena, clinching it on a shot that clipped the net. He kept the lead and on his first chance to take the set he unleashed a serve Verdasco couldn’t return.

Verdasco, a left-hander, broke for the first time to go up 2-0 in the second set and served out the rest of the set. Granollers broke to lead 4-2 in the deciding set on Verdasco’s double-fault. Verdasco had a chance to break back immediately but Granollers saved the game with a drop shot.
 

In Los Angeles, Mardy Fish fought from behind in the third set to advance to his second straight final, beating teenager Ryan Harrison 6-0, 4-6, 7-6 (3) on Saturday night at the Farmers Classic.

Fish will play for his second straight title Sunday against unseeded Ernests Gulbis of Latvia.

The top-seeded Fish beat Harrison in straight sets in the semifinals at Atlanta and picked up where he left off Saturday, breezing through the opening set in 20 minutes. A frustrated Harrison won only six points.

“That’s probably the cleanest set of tennis I’ve played in a long time,” Fish said.

Harrison responded in the second set and pushed Fish to the brink in the third. Fish regrouped and went up 5-0 in the tiebreaker and won the match with an ace.

“It’s never going to be like that for two sets,” Fish said. “I was playing at an extremely high level. You expect him to bounce back and play better. And he did.” Fish has won six career titles, but had never reached the final at this tournament.

Gulbis beat American Alex Bogomolov Jr. 6-2, 7-6 (4) to reach his second career final. The 2010 Delray Beach champion has never faced Fish.
 

In College Park, Maryland, top-seeded Shahar Peer advanced to the finals at the Citi Open by defeating third-seeded Tamira Paszek of Austria 3-6, 7-6 (2), 6-4 in a match that went more than three hours.

In the other semifinal match, second-seeded Nadia Petrova of Russia beat American Irina Falconi 1-6, 6-1, 6-3.

Petrova started slow in the first set after playing past 1 a.m. the night before, but settled down and gained confidence to take a 3-0 lead in the final set after a back-and-forth third game that lasted 15 minutes.

It is the fourth time during the 2011 WTA season that the top two seeds advanced to a finals.

Peer and Petrova have met five previous times with Petrova winning all five times. Petrova will be looking for her 10th career WTA title, while Peer is aiming at her 6th WTA title.
 

After needing nearly a year to recover from surgery, Serena Williams is playing like a champion again.

Williams moved into the final of the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford, California with an impressive 6-1, 6-2 victory over Germany’s Sabine Lisicki on Saturday night.

“I feel like a kid again,” Williams said. “When I was younger I had the goal of being in the top 100, then qualifying for a Grand Slam without a wild card. I have those goals again.”

It’s her first appearance in a final since winning the title at Wimbledon last year and her first final on American soil since losing to Victoria Azarenka in Miami in March of 2009.

The unseeded and 169th-ranked Williams will meet third-seeded and ninth-ranked Marion Bartoli of France, who advanced when Slovakia’s Dominika Cibulkova withdrew from the other semifinal because of a strained abdominal muscle.

Bartoli beat Williams in the fourth round at Wimbledon, their last meeting.

“She should be fresh and I will be ready,” Williams said. “It’s a whole new match and I’m a better player than I was at Wimbledon. This is great progress and I’m excited about my potential as I go forward.” Lisicki played tight in the first set, which fed into Williams’ aggressive attack.