Tennis
Chinese charge into Estoril semis
By DPA
May 5, 2006, 16:48 GMT

Estoril, Portugal - Eight seed Na Li of China upset tournament number 2 Gisela Dulko of Argentina, 6-3, 6-1, on Friday, to win a place in the semi-finals of the 647,250-euro Estoril Open alongside compatriot Jie Zheng.

Jie, ranked 49th and with a WTA title in Australia from January 2005, defeated Czech Zuzana Ondraskova 6-1, 6-3 in one hour, 21 minutes.

The Chinese Na won through in just over an hour as Dulko, ranked 33rd, failed to duplicate her semifinal from 2005.

Na, who won a title at Guangzhou in autumn, 2004, broke the Argentine five times and lost her own serve only once.

'I'm so excited to be in the semis again,' said the winner playing in only her third career clay event. 'I was thinking last night about how I would play this match. I had a lot of scenarios figured out. 'But I over-thought everything, it was easier than I expected.'

Top seed Flavia Pennetta got past Greek Eleni Daniilidou 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 to set up a Saturday match-up against Jie.

The Italian is aiming to finally win a trophy in 2006 after coming up short in three finals, including failed successive wins on clay in Bogata and Acapulco.

French seventh seed Emilie Loit, the 2004 winner, beat Spain's third seed Lourdes Dominguez Lino 6-4, 2-6, 6-2 to line up against Na.

On the men's side, Spanish specialist Albert Portas ended the unexpected winning run of American Justin Gimelstob 6-4, 6-3 with the winner reaching his first semi-finals since Palermo 2001.

2000 champion Carlos Moya, the sixth-seeded former world number 1, defeated fellow-Spaniard Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, 7-6 (7-4), 6-4, and awaits a winner from second seed Nikolay Davydenko and Gilles Muller.