Lindsay Davenport escaped with a 6-2, 7-6 (5) victory over Slovakia's Daniela Hantuchova on Thursday to reach the Pen Pilot semifinals, putting her within one win of regaining the No. 1 ranking from Maria Sharapova.
Top-seeded Davenport, tuning up for next week's US Open, struggled to find her serve for the second consecutive match, and delivered eight double faults.
But Davenport, who missed nearly two months with a back injury and has not played a full tournament since losing the Wimbledon final, said it's just a matter of getting her service rhythm back.
"It's one of my biggest weapons," she said. "I'm not scared that it's gone away."
Davenport will next play Anna Chakvetadze of Russia. Chakvetadze downed Zheng Jie of China 6-4, 6-4 and will play in her first career semis.
Davenport, who lost the No. 1 ranking on Monday, beat Hantuchova by surviving a second-set scare. She trailed 3-0 in the second set before winning five straight games, then lost her serve, but saved a break point at 6-5 to force a tiebreaker.
"It would be wrong of me to expect I can come back after seven or eight weeks and be perfect," Davenport said.
Amelie Mauresmo, the tournament's No. 2 seed, remained on course to meet Davenport in the final after winning 6-3, 6-2 over Germany's Anna-Lena Groenefeld, who made 27 unforced errors.
Mauresmo, who also made the semifinals last week in Montreal, faces Anabel Medina Garrigues after the Spaniard upset No. 4-seeded Elena Dementieva 6-4, 6-3. Dementieva, last year's US and French Open runner-up, said she felt sluggish during the morning match.
"I'm not a morning person," she said.
Among the men, Fernando Verdasco of Spain upset second-seeded Fernando Gonzalez of Chile, 6-7 (3), 7-5, 7-6 (3), reaching the quarterfinals with countrymen Tommy Robredo (No. 4) and Feliciano Lopez (No. 5).
Verdasco won a serving battle with Gonzalez, hitting 14 aces to nine, and advancing to the quarterfinals for his best result on hardcourts this year. He'll face Lopez, who came back from losing the first set to beat Vince Spadea of the US 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4.
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