ROME, Italy (AFP) — Former Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova will play Australia’s Samantha Stosur in the Rome International final after their semi-final victories yesterday.

Seventh-seed Sharapova defeated world number one Caroline Wozniacki, 7-5, 6-3, in a match littered with service breaks.

Earlier Stosur had steam-rollered China’s Li Na, 7-6 (8/6), 6-0.

Sharapova has won their seven previous encounters, dropping only two sets in the process, but has never been entirely comfortable on clay while Stosur says it is her favourite surface.

“It’s the first time I’m playing her on clay and her best results have been on clay,” said Sharapova.

“She’s playing really good tennis, clay really suits her game but it’s a great feeling to be in the final of this event, I’m just going to go out and go for it.

“With every year I feel better and better on it (clay). When I was first on tour I wasn’t the strongest, I didn’t have the strongest legs and I didn’t find it easy to recover from one match to the next but I’ve improved on that.”

Sharapova rolled back the years with a performance of crisp power hitting to eventually prove too much for her Danish opponent.

She broke Wozniacki early on but when she led 4-3 there were four breaks in a row until the Russian finally held serve to take the set 7-5.

The service struggles continued at the start of the second set as four of the first five games went against the server.

That saw Wozniacki open up a 3-1 lead but Sharapova wouldn’t let her consolidate and reeled off the final five games as she consistently found the corners with rasping ground-strokes.

The 27-year-old Stosur recorded her third-straight sets win over Li and maintained her unbeaten record against a player ranked one place above her in the world.

Stosur also reached her first final since the 2010 French Open almost a year ago.

And she said that there was nothing unusual about Li’s second set collapse.

“Sometimes when that happens, if you do win a tight first set then it can be a real boost to that person but for the other person that loses it can almost be a deflation and it’s a big disappointment,” she said.

“But I guess this is when you have to be tough enough to try and forget about it and start over again because obviously you have been playing well enough to play a tight first set.

Meanwhile, Rafael Nadal overcame a stiff first-set challenge from Richard Gasquet before rolling to a 7-5, 6-1 win in the men’s semi-finals.

The top-ranked Spaniard faced break points in three different games during the opening set but won all of them to improve his career record against Gasquet to 9-0.

In today’s final, Nadal will face either second-ranked Novak Djokovic or No 4 Andy Murray, who were meeting later on another cloudless day at the Foro Italico. Djokovic is aiming to extend his 37-match winning streak.