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| May 18, 2003 | Sunday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 15, 1424 |
Mauresmo upsets Serena
ROME, May 17: Amelie Mauresmo upset defending champion Serena Williams 1-6 7-5 6-3 on Saturday to advance to the final of the Rome Masters, inflicting only the second defeat of the year on the world number one.
It was the Frenchwoman’s first victory over Williams in six encounters.
The defending champion dominated the first set, playing perfect power tennis and rifling groundstroke winners past Mauresmo to go 5-0 up in less than a quarter of an hour. The American closed out the set in just 21 minutes.
In the second set, Mauresmo broke Williams’s serve to go 2-0 up, but then choked, hitting two double faults at 30-30 in the following game to surrender the advantage.
Unforced errors allowed the top seed to break to a 5-4 lead and a chance to serve for the match, but a string of unforced errors caused her to lose her next two service games and allow Mauresmo to level the match at one set all.
In the decider Mauresmo twice fought back from a break down before taking advantage of three wide forehands in the eighth game to snatch a precious 5-3 lead and serve out the match.
Semifinal results:
Amelie Mauresmo (France) bt Serena Williams 1-6 7-5 6-3; Kim Clijsters (Belgium) bt Ai Sugiyama (Japan) 6-3 6-2.
HAMBURG (Germany): Guillermo Coria survived an injury scare and a hotly disputed tiebreak line call to earn a place in the Hamburg Masters final on Sunday against fellow Argentine Agustin Calleri.
Twelfth-seeded Coria needed two and a half hours to overcome Gaston Gaudio 6-3 6-7 (3-7) 6-0 but Calleri wrapped up a 6-4 6-1 win over eighth seed David Nalbandian, another Argentine, in just 79 minutes.
It was the first time that four players from the same country have contested the semifinals of a Masters Series tournament.
Both Coria and Gaudio showed plenty of touch at the net as well as contesting some fierce baseline rallies but, once he was broken in the second game of the final set, Gaudio virtually conceded the battle and claimed just three points in the last four games.
That capitulation was in stark contrast to the first two sets. After winning the first, Coria needed to save a set point at 5-4 in the second and was forced to call on the trainer for several minutes of treatment on a calf injury before resuming at 6-5 down.
In the ensuing tiebreak, Coria called a ball out which appeared to have landed long during a rally and was incensed when the point was awarded to his opponent.
That gave Gaudio a 2-0 lead and the dispute seemed to unsettle Coria, who double-faulted on the final point of the tiebreak to take the match into a one-sided, deciding set.
Earlier, Nalbandian, a surprise runner-up at Wimbledon last year, paid the price for failing to convert any of six break points he held in the first set or the two he earned in the second.
But it was Calleri’s swiftness around the court against a sometimes sluggish opponent that also played a major part in his victory to take him to his first Masters Series final.
Semifinal results: Agustin Calleri (Argentina) bt David Nalbandian (Argentina) 6-4 6-1; Guillermo Coria (Argentina) bt Gaston Gaudio (Argentina) 6-3 6-7 (3-7) 6-0—Reuters
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