Third seed Iroda Tulyaganova of Uzbekistan rallied from a set down to defeat fancied Akiko Morigami of Japan and storm into the final of $140,000 WTA tennis tournament in Hyderabad on Friday.
The Uzbek bounced back into the match after conceding the first set tamely to carve out a 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory.
"I have come here to win the championship and will go all out for it," Iroda declared after the match.
In the final, she will take on second seed Tamarine Tanasugarn of Thailand, who overcame a 2-5 first-set deficit to quell the challenge of Italian giant-killer Flavia Pennetta 7-5, 6-4,
The final will be a repeat of the Busan Asian Games gold medal contest, which the Uzbek won.
Akiko started off the semi-final with promise and convincingly clinched the first set after dropping two points and threatening to enhance her reputation of giant-killer. But the chubby-faced Iroda had other plans. She packed experience and elegance into her serves and long rallies to stun the young Japanese girl in the second set. Akiko fell into the trap laid by the Uzbek and hit the ball erratically.
In the second set, after trading breaks, Iroda won the first game with a powerful smash. Akiko took the next with a cross-court drive and increased the lead with another angular shot.
The power play of the Uzbek came to the fore as she dragged her opponent to the forecourt to pick points with a smash to baseline.
Frustration was writ large on Akiko's face as she went berserk, conceding negative points and committing too many errors. Her shots flew off court or crashed into the net. Adding to her woes were the double-faults which she committed.
The third seed picked the second set with a double-fault from Akiko to level set scores 1-1.
Akiko, who was enjoying her giant-killing acts till now, trouncing top seed Clarisa Fernandez (Arg) and eighth seed Silvija Talaja (Croatia) in the initial rounds, surprisingly looked highly ill at ease against Iroda.
The players had their own bouts of arguments with the chair umpire. While the Uzbek was loud and more articulate, the diminutive Akiko had a strange way of protesting. She just stared at the chair for a moment, broke into a smile, bowed her head in typical Japanese fashion and lazily walked back to the base to resume play.
In the decider, Iroda succeeded in pushing her opponent back and forth with elastic variation, mixing drop shots and cross-court drives with ease to take it at 6-2.
The 24-year-old Pennetta, who scalped sixth seed Christiana Torrens Valrec and fourth seed Mary Pierce on her way to the last four, jumped to a 5-2 lead in the first set, twice breaking the Thai star. But Tanasugarn, a consistent performer at Wimbledon and Australian Open and ranked 31 in the world, took advantage of a crucial mistake by her Italian opponent in the ninth game that turned her fortunes around dramatically.
Leading 5-3 and serving for the set, Pennetta committed a double-fault to lose the set and the initiative, as Tanasugaran reeled off five games in-a-row to take the first set in 41 minutes.
The Thai player was off to a 3-1 lead in the second set before the temperamental Italian, who once threw down the racquet after missing a sitter and disputed line calls on more than a couple of occasions, managed to hold her serve.
However, Penetta's powerful down-the-line and backhand cross court shots landed either beyond the base and sidelines or in the net at crucial times that helped the Thai maintain a strangle hold on the match.
Tanasugarn, serving for the match, faced some anxious moments but threw her hands up after Pennetta hit on over the base line on the second match point.
