TOKYO Martina Hingis and Lindsay Davenport each suffered second-set slips in their semifinals at the Pan Pacific Open on Saturday but advanced to set up a showdown between the world's top two women players.

Hingis received a wake-up call after a miserable second set and defeated Bulgaria's Magdalena Maleeva in the semifinal 6-3 1-6 6-0 of the $1.2 million indoor tournament.

Davenport weathered a storm from Russian number three seed Anna Kournikova to book a spot in the finals with a 6-1 6-7 (5-7) 6-0 victory.

The Hingis-Davenport match will mark the 16th time the two have met in a final.

Davenport has won nine of those contests but Hingis has won three of the last four, including a three-set thriller in a warm-up event in Sydney last month for the Australian Open.

Hingis and Davenport are both looking to rebound from losses at the Australian Open as the tall American fell to Jennifer Capriati in the semifinals and Hingis tumbled against the same player in the final.

Swiss number one seed Hingis had a rough start against Maleeva as she battled for nearly every point in the first set and lost her precision and focus in the second.

"After the second set, I guess I woke up again," Hingis said.

"The second was when I let (myself) down and Maggie played some unbelievable shots," Hingis said.

The wake-up alarm rang loudly in the third, as Hingis blitzed the Bulgarian veteran to take it to love and completed her victory with an ace on match point.

Hingis is aiming to claim an unprecedented third straight Pan Pac title.

"I played a lot of tennis in the last month so I am confident going into the finals," Hingis said."

Wrecking Ball

Davenport had been a wrecking ball in Tokyo going into her semifinal match with Kournikova, allowing less than a point per game off her serve while averaging more than an ace per game.

Davenport demolished Kournikova in the first set as the Russian seemed to lose some of her fight after dropping her serve in a marathon fifth game to put Davenport 4-1 up.

In the second, both players held serve for the first seven games as Kournikova took control of the match firing laser-like shots down the flanks and spotting her first serve with deadly accuracy.

Both players exchanged breaks in the eighth and ninth games to set up the tiebreak, which Kournikova won by being the better player off the baseline.

"I don't think I did anything wrong," Davenport said when asked how she recovered after dropping the second set after leading 5-3. "She lifted her game tremendously."

Kournikova was broken in the first game of the final set and never came back as she lost it to love. In the deciding set, the Russian suffered from three double faults while the American pounded four aces.

First prize in the tournament is $175,000 while the runner-up takes home $94,000.

(Reuter)