Saturday, 29 September, 2007

Top seed Anna Chakvetadze crashed out of the Fortis Championships on Friday after going down in three sets to Marion Bartoli.

The fifth-seeded Frenchwoman downed the Russian 6-4 4-6 6-4 to advance to the last four.

It was a rare loss for 20-year-old Chakvetadze, who had won 21 of her previous 24 matches, including back-to-back titles at Cincinnati and Stanford.

While she has not been able to capture a title, Bartoli's summer has been nearly as productive. Behind reaching her first grand slam final at Wimbledon, the 22-year-old climbed as high as 10th in the rankings.

In the first meeting with Chakvetadze, Bartoli took advantage of some shaky serving by the Russian, who won just 58% of the points on her first serve (68-for-117) and had 10 double-faults.

While Chakvetadze stumbled at this hard court event, second seed Ana Ivanovic strolled past eighth seed Tatiana Golovin of France 6-1 6-2.

The 19-year-old Serbian fired down six aces and had six breaks of serve.

Ivanovic next will face unseeded Vera Zvonareva in Saturday's semis.

Zvonareva continued her run with a 6-1 7-6 (7-5) triumph over Victoria Azarenka of Belarus. It is the third semi-final showing this season for the Russian, who missed nearly five months due to injury.

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