Henin-Hardenne continues clay court dominance

Justine Henin
By Chris Davies
April 19 2003

Justine Henin-Hardenne beat former French Open champion Monica Seles 6-2, 6-4 to advance into the semi-finals along with Lindsay Davenport beating Patty Schnyder 6-1, 6-1. Elena Dementieva defeats Daniela Hantuchova 6-0 6-1.

Justine Henin-Hardenne beat former French Open champion Monica Seles 6-2, 6-4 to advance into the semi-finals along with Lindsay Davenport beating Patty Schynder 6-1, 6-1

Seles who has only returned back to the tour this week after months off was always going to face an uphill battle against the Belgian number 2. But the American used her experience on the clay and did challenge Henin-Hardenne early in the second set but was broken at 2-2 then never looked back.

The top seed had a bit of a up and down serve with 8 aces and 7 double faults and was only broken twice in the match out of 8 chances. The second set lasted double the time of the first set but there was only going to be one winner and seems nobody can stop the Belgian at the moment.

Lindsay Davenport joined Henin-Hardenne in the semi-finals after she played phenomenally well against Swiss number 1 Patty Schynder winning in just 55 minutes playing consistently at the net and winning double the points of Schnyder.

The match was a very low unforced errors clash with only 9 from the Swiss girl and 8 from Davenport.

Elena Dementieva advanced to her first semi-final of the year by defeating 4th seed Daniela Hantuchova in impressive fashion winning the first set 6-0. Hantuchova went ahead 40-0 at 5-0 but the Russian pegged her back to win the final game of the set.

The Slovak had no answers for Dementieva's game and lost 6-0, 6-1. The last time these two meant was at the Paris Indoors where Dementieva won 7-5, 6-3 and she leads 5-2 head to head. But the Russian now faces a tough task to advance any further with Henin-Hardenne in the next round.

Jennifer Capriati set up a mouthwatering semi-final clash against Lindsay Davenport after the third seed finally got her game together saying that her game is where she wants it to be. She will need to play near perfect to beat Davenport.

Quarter Finals Results

(1) J HENIN-HARDENNE (BEL) bt (6) M SELES (USA)
6-2, 6-4

(2) L DAVENPORT (USA) bt (7) P SCHYNDER (SUI)
6-1, 6-1

(10) E DEMENTIEVA (RUS) bt (4) D HANTUCHOVA (SVK)
6-0, 6-1

(3) J CAPRIATI (USA)bt (12) L RAYMOND (USA)
6-2, 6-0