Monday, Feb 18, 2002
Monday, Feb 18, 2002 |
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Tennis
DOHA, FEB. 17. Top- seeded American Monica Seles had to battle her way through a tough three sets against Australia's Alicia Molik to claim a place in the final of the Qatar Open with a 6-3, 6-7, 6-4 victory. Seles will now meet fourth seed Tamarine Tanasugarn of Thailand who had a relatively easy 6-0, 7-6 win over Janette Husarova of Slovakia in the other semifinals. The Seles-Molik match on Saturday turned out to be a marathon affair, lasting one hour and 55 minutes and it could have gone either way, with both the players fighting it out till the very end. After a quiet first set, which Seles won after service breaks in the fifth and ninth games, the match came alive with Molik firing on all cylinders and going for her shots. Seles was forced to sweat it out as both the players held serve through the set until Molik won the nerve-wracking tie-break 7-5 to take the match into the decider. Seles said Molik had been playing great tennis this week and she had expected a tough fight. ``However, I did not expect this kind of a fight. It was very tough and I am glad that I came out the winner,'' she said. Molik said she was very disappointed to lose and drew attention to a disputed call in the third game of the second set when Seles seemed to have taken a ball on the second bounce. ``We were going level till then. Once I lost that point, I lost concentration for a while and was broken. That changed the match for me,'' Molik said. Seles, however, played down the incident and said she had made a clean shot. ``These kinds of things keep happening. One should not let such things ruin a game,'' she added. Tanasugarn, yet to win a singles crown on the WTA Tour after reaching four finals, took a vice-like grip from the start and made short work of Husarova to quickly win the first set. The Slovakian then moved into aggressive mode and attacked in the second set, producing some brilliant shots. She was also more mobile and pinned Tanasugarn to the baseline. But the Thai held on and, after wasting a match point in the 12th game, took the set into a tie-break where smart serving saw her win five points in a row from 2-2 to wrap up the match. The results: Monica Seles bt Alicia Molik 6-3, 6-7, 6- 4; Tamarine Tanasugarn bt Janette Husarova 6-0, 7-6. - Reuters
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