Tennis: Graf ousted by Davenport

TOP SEED Lindsay Davenport reasserted her claim to the world No 1 ranking by halting the resurgent Steffi Graf in the semi-finals of the season-ending Chase Championships here yesterday.

Just over a month into her reign as the top-ranked player in the world and a week after losing to Graf in the Philadelphia final, the 22-year- old American advanced to the last final of the year with a 6-1 2-6 6- 3 victory over the former world No 1.

The US Open champion will face the second-seeded Swiss teenager Martina Hingis today in the only best-of-five-sets final in women's tennis. Hingis beat Romania's Irina Spirlea in the other semi-final, 6-2 7-6. Spirlea, like Graf, was unseeded.

It will be Davenport's second final in the event, she was beaten in straight sets by Gabriela Sabatini in 1994. The five-times champion Graf, going for her seventh final in 13 trips to Madison Square Garden, was on a 12-match unbeaten streak during which she had lifted two titles.

The injury-prone German had won her previous three matches after dropping the first set. But her luck ran out when she suffered a third-set hamstring strain that hampered her mobility and gave Davenport the edge in the closing stages.

"It's been a long three weeks and everything feels really tired. I guess it was just a little bit too much today," said the 29-year-old winner of 21 Grand Slam titles. "I'm disappointed right now, but in general I gave it everything I had in the last three weeks. It's been great, exciting, a lot of fun." Davenport said: "We were both trying to hold our serves at the end. I just was able to hold mine a little more."

Hingis, 17, ripped through the first set in 22 minutes. The second was another matter. Spirlea matched strokes with the Swiss prodigy, who had her serve broken twice before wrapping up a tense tie-break 9-7 after Spirlea had held set point two times.