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SportsTicker 19y

Dementieva rallies past Kuznetsova at Indian Wells

By Paul Levine
SportsTicker Contributing Writer

INDIAN WELLS, California It is no secret that Lindsay
Davenport is more comfortable and confident playing in familiar
surroundings than being on the road, so she sent Nathalie Dechy
packing.

Davenport defeated the sixth-seeded Dechy of France, 7-6 (7-2),
6-0, Thursday to advance to the semifinals of the $2.1 million
Pacific Life Open at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.

The current world No. 1 awaits the winner of Thursday tonight's
battle between reigning Wimbledon champion and No. 3 seed Maria
Sharapova and veteran French star Mary Pierce.

Although Davenport resides in the coastal town of Laguna Beach -
just two hours from the desert - with all her success here, one
can almost call Indian Wells her second home.

Davenport, in her 12th year on the WTA Tour, has won the Indian
Wells title twice and has been runner-up three times, including
the last two years.

"I've always loved my time out here and won a lot of matches
throughout my career at Indian Wells," said Davenport, who owns
a 41-9 record here. "I always seem to really get focused and
fired up to play out here."

One reason is the familiar faces that come out to support the
28-year-old Southern Californian.

"I like that I have my family around, and friends come out," she
said. "If I could play every tournament in Southern California
I'd play forever."

On the men's side, pesky Guillermo Canas of Argentina continued
to frustrate Britain's Tim Henman, dispatching the two-time
Indian Wells finalist, 7-6, (7-2), 7-5.

Canas has won five of six lifetime meetings against Henman,
including five straight, but they have all been tightly
contested matches.

"Always we have tough matches," Canas said. "Maybe I play better
the important point against him. Maybe I have a little bit
luck. Maybe the game he plays is good for me."

Canas advanced to his first semifinal of the year, where the No.
14 seed will play the winner of the match between world No. 1
and defending champion Roger Federer of Switzerland and Nicolas
Kiefer of Germany, who play Thursday in the featured night
pairing.

Without a service break, Canas captured the opening set by
playing a superb tiebreaker against the serve and volley
stylist.

In the second set, Canas led, 6-5, after the two traded service
breaks in the seventh and eighth games. Henman tried to serve
his way into another tiebreaker, but his hopes were dashed when
he lifted a forehand approach over the baseline on match point.

"It's a disappointing result, absolutely," said the sixth-seeded
Henman, whose 55 winners were just three more than his unforced
error count in the 2-hour, 19-minute defeat.

"It's pretty disappointing the way I played," he said. "I feel
like my game style should suit me well playing against him. But
my level throughout was just not good enough. You have to give
credit where credit is due and he certainly is a great
competitor. He makes you hit those extra shots and that caused
me to miss a few volleys that I normally wouldn't miss. The
execution of a lot of my shots was just poor. It's as simple as
that."

Davenport took another step toward a sixth final appearance in
front of her friends. But she needed a tiebreaker to capture the
opening set after squandering several chances, especially on
her own service.

The hard-hitting American grabbed a 3-1 lead but twice dropped
service after holding 40-0 advantages as the set was leveled at
4-4.

"Gosh, I let her back in the set so many times, both games being
up 40-0 and got broken both times," Davenport said. "You can
let someone get back in the first set like that. So, I really
felt like once I held to get to 6-all, I never really looked
back from that point."

The two traded service breaks for the third time to get to 6-6,
but Davenport dominated the tiebreaker

"I got a comfortable tiebreaker, got a lot of confidence in
that, and rolled in the second set," Davenport said. "I didn't
make some of those silly errors I made in the middle of the
first set."

With a set under her belt, Davenport made just four of her 27
unforced errors in the second set to breeze past the weary
Frenchwoman.

Dechy dropped to 0-7 lifetime against Davenport.

"I think the first set was a pretty good level of tennis and
then I dropped mine in the second set and she raised hers,"
Dechy said. "It was more a physical drop-off for me. I start to
be much more late on the ball and didn't run as fast. Against a
girl like that, it doesn't help."

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