Carson, August 14:

Daniela Hantuchova mixed solid serves with drop shots to upset third-seeded Elena Dementieva 6-3, 6-4 in the JPMorgan Chase Open semi-finals on Saturday night. The 22-year-old Slovak reached her first final in more than a year and just the fourth of her career. In final, Hantuchova will play fifth-seeded Kim Clijsters, who rallied from deficits in both sets to beat No 13 seed Francesca Schiavone of Italy 6-2, 6-4. Clijsters will be going for her fifth title of the year after coming back from wrist surgery last year. She is 6-0 against Hantuchova in her career. Clijsters improved to 30-1 in the United States, a streak dating back to her victory at the season-ending WTA Championships in 2003. The Belgian trailed 2-0 before twice breaking Schiavone at love to win the first set. She trailed 3-1 in the second after getting broken during a five-deuce game when she mis-hit a forehand. But Clijsters held serve, then broke Schiavone at love and hit a backhand winner to go up 4-3. Schiavone held at 4-4 before

Clijsters won the final two games.

Rogers Cup

MONTREAL: Top-seeded Rafael Nadal advanced to the final of the Rogers Cup with a 6-4, 7-5 victory over unseeded Paul-Henri Mathieu of France. The clay-court specialist will face Andre Agassi, who defeated Greg Rusedski 6-4, 6-4. Against Mathieu Nadal’s most spectacular moment was on game point in the second set, when he lunged and chipped a backhand that fell behind the 23-year-old Frenchman to make it 2-2. Mathieu made a string of unforced errors to lose his serve in the next game. However, with Nadal serving for the match, Mathieu won four straight points to hand the Spaniard his first loss in 52 service games of the tournament and tie the set 5-5. Mathieu handed it back the next game, double-faulting on game point, and Nadal served out for his ATP-leading 64th match win of the season. Earlier, Agassi defeated Gaston Gaudio 6-3, 6-4 in the completion of a quarter-final that was postponed on Friday night. Rusedski needed just 67 minutes to beat Dominik Hrbaty of Slovakia 6-3, 6-4.