Top seed Daniela Hantuchova battled past Taiwan's Chan Yung-Jan 7-6 (7-4), 4-6, 6-2 to join Nadia Petrova and Patty Schnyder in the Bali Open semifinals on Friday. Slovakia's Hantuchova, last year's runner-up, negotiated an opening set littered with eight breaks of serve and saved two set points before taking the lead on a tie-break. But Chan, a Strasbourg semifinalist in May, leveled at a set each Hantuchova eventually steadied to claim victory in just over two-and-a-half hours. Hantuchova will meet Tamira Paszek of Austria who upset Favia Penetta of italy 4-6, 6-0, 6-2. Second seed Patty Schnyder had it much easier as she crushed Marta Domachowska 6-2, 6-2 in the 57th-ranked Pole's first quarterfinal of the season. “I made few early errors and had a great start,” said the Swiss US Open quarter-finalist. “She had to adjust to my game and didn't like it.” Earlier Russian fourth seed Petrova overcame a ragged start to beat Italy's Francesca Schiavone 6-4, 6-3. Petrova will face Schnyder on Saturday trailing 5-6 in their series dating back to 2000. Petrova recovered from 4-1 down in the first set, then raced away for her third consecutive straight-sets win against the fifth seed. “I had a poor start and I got mad at myself,” said Petrova, competing in Bali for the second time. “I didn't like the way I was playing. “I wasn't giving the right fight out there, I realized that and started doing something about it. “In the second set I felt more in charge and confident on serve. Overall, I'm happy with the performance.” Simon, Gasquet advance In Romania, top-seeded Richard Gasquet of France rallied to defeat Teimuraz Gabashvili of Russia 6-7 (6), 6-1, 6-1 Friday to advance to the semifinals of the BCR Open Romania. Gasquet will play sixth-seeded Carlos Moya, who also came from behind to beat Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 5-7, 6-3, 6-4 in an all-Spanish match that lasted more than 2? hours. Moya, who reached the 1996 final, served 10 aces. Also, 2007 champion Gilles Simon of France defeated countryman Florent Serra 6-2, 6-3. The second-seeded Simon will next face Jose Acasuso of Argentina, who beat Ivan Navarro of Spain 6-4, 6-4. Russia favorite Spain played down on Friday the significance of Russia's absent top seeds for this weekend's Fed Cup final and said the defending champion would still be the favorite. Elena Dementieva, Dinara Safina and Maria Sharapova, seeded fourth, fifth and sixth in the world, are all missing from the Russian team. But they still boast world number nine Vera Zvonareva, who takes on Spain's number one Anabel Medina Garrigues in Saturday's opener, and world number seven Svetlana Kuznetsova who faces Carla Suarez in the second singles rubber. “They are still the favorites. We have a good doubles pair, but so do they,” the hosts' Virginia Ruano told a news conference. Medina Garrigues is Spain's highest ranked singles player at 29, and, with Ruano, makes up the other half of Spain's silver medal winning doubles duo from the Beijing Olympics. However, team captain Miguel Margets named Nuria Llagostera as Ruano's partner to play Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina in Sunday's doubles, with Medina Garrigues competing in the reverse singles matches earlier in the day. Russia captain Shamil Tarpishchev backed his team's despite the absence of Olympic champion Dementieva and Beijing silver medallist Safina, who ruled themselves out for personal reasons. “We have the strongest team available at this moment in time,” Tarpishchev said. “Those competing (in the latter stages) of the US Open would not have been properly prepared, and the Olympics was very hard on players physically and mentally.” Russia plays Spain on clay at the Club de Campo in Madrid on Saturday and Sunday.
