Hingis faces Davenport challenge

Martina Hingis moves into the final

Switzerland's Martina Hingis received a wake-up call after a miserable second set and defeated Bulgaria's Magdalena Maleeva 6-3 1-6 6-0 in the semi-final of the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo on Saturday.

She will face America's Lindsay Davenport in Sunday's final.

Davenport beat Anna Kournikova, of Russia, 6-1 6-7 6-0.

Hingis had a rough start as she battled for 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," said Hingis.

It was very hard to catch her once she was ahead

  Magdalena Maleeva

"The second was when I let down, and Maggie played some unbelievable shots," she said.

In the third, she blitzed the Bulgarian veteran to take it at love and punctuated her victory with an ace on match point.

In the second, Hingis lost five straight games and her control as she was unable to place her first serves.

Maleeva fought well maintaining focus on the ball, and not allowing the world number one any chance to recover.

Deadly accuracy

"I played a very good second set, and I started bad in the third. And then it was very hard to catch her once she was ahead," said Maleeva.

Hingis is looking to grab an unprecedented third straight Pan Pac title.

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.

Showdown

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

Kournikova was broken in the first game of the final set and never came back as she lost it to love.

In the last show-down between world number one Hingis and number two Davenport, Hingis came out victorious in a three-set match in an Australian Open warm-up event in Sydney last month.