Former world number one Monica Seles fended off a late surge by Lina Krasnoroutskaya of Russia yesterday to reach the semifinals of the Pan Pacific Open tennis tournament.
The American top seed double-faulted on a break point to go 2-3 down in the first but recovered to score a convincing 6-4, 6-4 victory.
Krasnoroutskaya threatened to come back from 0-4 down in the second set, hitting an array of hard strokes from the baseline.
PHOTO: AP
But the Russian, ranked 129th in the world against Seles' ninth, made a backhand error to give the American double match point in the 10th game. Seles cashed in at the second attempt.
"I lost my concentration a little bit," Seles said of the second set.
"I think she played those two games really well. On this [fast] surface, the points go so fast and I was getting frustrated from 4-love to 4-all. I was lucky at 5-4 to win it," she said.
"She played really well two or three years ago at Wimbledon, I think she likes grass. I think she just has a game that suits this court surface, she just hits hard and flat, and that was giving a lot of trouble today," Seles added.
The Russian said she was happy with her performance over the week despite losing to Seles.
"Even though I lost today, I'm very happy with my week coming through qualifying and making it the quarterfinals with some good wins," said Krasnoroutskaya, 18, who was ranked 34th two years ago.
"Monica was just too good today. She was moving me around very well."
In the semifinals today, Seles will take on fellow American fourth seed Chanda Rubin, the winner over Sydney Olympic silver medallist Elena Dementieva of Russia 3-6, 6-1, 6-3.
Rubin started her match with a double fault and lost the first set with double fault number two at 3-5 and 0-40.
But Dementieva returned the favour by double-faulting to lose three games in the next two sets.
The 22-year-old crawled back to 3-4 with a service break in the seventh game, but Rubin broke back the following game -- after eight deuces -- and then served out the match.
"That game at 4-3 in the third was important. I was competing well and my returns helped me out a lot, so overall I'm very happy with my performance today," added the American.
Meanwhile, second seed Jelena Dokic lost to unseeded American Lisa Raymond 4-6, 2-6 to crash out of her season-opening event.
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