Henin into Swiss final
ByReuters
Published 18/10/2003 at 13:43 GMT
Belgian Justine Henin-Hardenne battled past Russian Nadia Petrova 6-4 6-4 on Saturday to reach the final of the Swisscom Challenge -- her 11th final of the year. Follow the WTA Zurich semi-finals LIVE NOW on eurosport.com and Eurosport TV!
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The second seed and world number two, who admitted she was running on empty after playing her 80th match of the season to reach the semis, was broken four times in the match but used all her gritty qualities to dig out victory.
In doing so, she stretched her unbeaten run over Petrova to five, with four of their meetings coming this year in Den Bosch, San Diego, Toronto and Zurich.
She now remains on course to meet compatriot and world number one Kim Clijsters, who faces Yugoslav Jelena Dokic in the second semi-final, and battle it out for the top ranking on Sunday.
Petrova was broken in the opening game of the match but, after saving three break points in her second service game, she drew level in the fourth when Henin-Hardenne hit into the net on the third break point.
It was a close match, with every game hotly contested, but Henin-Hardenne kept her nose ahead in the opening set to seal it.
Petrova eased into a 2-0 lead in the second set when Henin-Hardenne hit two successive double faults to lose her serve to love.
The Belgian broke back immediately, however, when Petrova returned the compliment and then held to level at 2-2.
The pair then continued the trend of tight, see-saw games peppered with mistakes when they broke each other then held their own serves to move to 4-4 with tension mounting.
Petrova cracked first, however, in the crucial ninth game of the set and after saving two break points she double faulted on the third to hand Henin-Hardenne the opportunity to serve for the match and the Belgian did not need asking twice.
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