KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. (AP) -- Venus Williams is 6-foot-1 and looked even taller Thursday, playing high-wire tennis and rising above the debate about fixed matches and racist fans to defeat her most irksome rival.

Williams gambled by swinging all-out on shot after shot, and the strategy worked. She controlled the rallies, kept defending champion Martina Hingis on the defensive and won 6-3, 7-6 (6) in the semifinals at the Ericsson Open.

``That is my game, to hit the ball,'' Williams said. ``Any time that I try to play otherwise, I become an average player.''

She avenged the most lopsided loss of her career, a 6-1, 6-1 drubbing against Hingis at the Australian Open semifinals in January.

In Saturday's final, Williams will bid for her third Key Biscayne title against the winner of Friday's match between No. 4 Jennifer Capriati and No. 7 Elena Dementieva.

No. 8 Pat Rafter beat Roger Federer 6-3, 6-1 in 58 minutes and will next play the winner of the quarterfinal match to be completed Friday between No. 3 Andre Agassi and Ivan Ljubicic. It was suspended because of rain with Agassi trailing 3-1.

Controversy engulfed the Williams family following Venus' withdrawal from the Indian Wells semifinal against her sister Serena on March 15. There was speculation she ducked the match, and when the crowd booed the family, her father, Richard, said the jeers were racially motivated.

The Slovakia-born Hingis discounted his allegation as ``nonsense,'' saying she could counter with a charge of racism against crowds in the United States because they're pro-American.

Williams defended her father and denied fixing matches but otherwise tried to stay out of the debate.

``For me it's not really very difficult, because in my opinion all these things going on around me are not very important,'' she said. ``Tennis is not all and everything for me, so I really have been able to keep my game under control.''

Playing with a bandage on each knee, the third-seeded Williams showed no effects of the knee tendinitis that she cited for her withdrawal at Indian Wells. She took the offensive from the start and hit 51 winners but also 51 unforced errors, numbers that even she found startling.

``Oh my God. Really?'' Williams said. ``Maybe I need to go to an 11-step program for unforced errors.''

Her father, watching from the front row, liked his daughter's zealous play. When she took a big swing at an easy backhand and slammed it into the net, they grinned at each other.

``It was kind of weird,'' Hingis said. ``She didn't really give me too much timing. It was like she hit a winner, and then she made a stupid mistake.''

Hingis had distractions of her own: She's expected to testify Monday in the Miami trial of a man charged with stalking her at last year's tournament.

As for the more mundane matter of tennis rankings, Williams is gaining on Hingis, who has been No. 1 for 183 weeks. Next week Williams will climb from third to second for the first time, moving ahead of Lindsay Davenport.

``She always comes up with some great tournaments,'' Hingis said. ``So the other question is, can she keep it up? Can her body keep it up? You see all the bandages, like the wrist and legs, and last week she retired, so you don't know.''

Williams said she looks forward to taking April off but expects to be ready for the final.

``I'm OK,'' she said. ``If I was hurting too much, then I wouldn't play.''

With the help of a fast start, she needed only two sets against Hingis, who let a game point slip away in each of the first three games and fell behind 4-0. There were 56 points played before Hingis finally won a game, and she double faulted to lose the first set.

The second set was tighter, but Hingis missed a chance to serve it out at 5-4. She held a set point at 6-5 in the tiebreaker, but Williams smacked overhead and forehand winners for a 7-6 lead, then closed out the victory when Hingis pushed a backhand wide.

Williams extended her winning streak on Key Biscayne to 17 matches. She won the tournament in 1998 and 1999, then was sidelined last year by wrist tendinitis.

``If I could play every tournament like I do the Ericsson,'' she said, ``I'd be undefeated.''