Tennis: Pennetta final favourite

First seed Flavia Pennett (left) and third seed Yanina Wickmayer. Photos / Brett Phibbs

It seems amazing now that Flavia Pennetta suffered a nasty bout of nerves before her first-round match against Jill Craybas at the Auckland women's tennis tournament.

So serene has the Italian top seed's passage been to today's ASB Classic final against third-seeded Belgian Yanina Wickmayer, it's hard to believe she had much to worry about.

Even a semifinal date with Fed Cup team-mate Francesca Schiavone yesterday - a player who had beaten her four times out of five - appeared little more than a lightly opposed training session for the classy Pennetta.

Schiavone, who had dominated her previous opponents with a crushing power game, had no answer to her countrywoman's precision. From the outset the fourth seed was on the back foot, prevented from finding any rhythm by Pennetta's crisp, pinpoint play. By the second set Schiavone seemed to have lost interest. She knew the game was up, rolling over to capitulate 6-3, 6-0 in just 57 minutes.

Pennetta, who has dropped just 13 games en route to the final, will start as favourite. But Wickmayer has shown enough to suggest the result is far from a foregone conclusion.

She has also not dropped a set this week, subduing gritty Israeli Shahar Peer 6-4, 7-5 in a much more engaging semifinal.

Pennetta has eight titles to the younger Belgian's two, but Wickmayer has won the only previous encounter between the pair, in straight sets in Linz, Austria, in October.

"It is going to be a tough final but I am really happy to be in it," Wickmayer said.

"I'll have to play a bit better and step up a bit. But I have been playing very well this week. I played very well in the last couple of matches and I didn't play bad [yesterday]. I beat a good player so that means I played some good tennis at some point."

Yesterday Wickmayer was fully stretched by the determined Peer. The Belgian had a clear edge in the first set, breaking Peer in the third and fifth games to take a 4-1 advantage. But Peer broke back and held her own serve to close to 3-4, forcing Wickmayer to knuckle down on serve to close out the set 6-4.

What had been a subtle momentum shift late in the first set became a full-blown swing when Peer held convincingly and then broke Wickmayer to take an early lead in the second.

Peer then held to love for 3-0 but she couldn't maintain the charge.

Wickmayer held serve for 1-3 and then broke back with a fluky net cord winner after Peer had double-faulted to bring up a break point. "In the middle of the match I actually said to my mother in Hebrew 'she is so lucky today'," Peer said.

The Israeli certainly didn't have much luck of her own, with a succession of tight line calls going against her late in the match.

The best rally of the match - and probably the tournament - came with Peer pressing Wickmayer's serve in the sixth game. The Israeli was on the back foot throughout but somehow ran down every ball until Wickmayer cracked and sent a forehand wide.

Peer paid a hefty price for the effort, though, dropping the next five points as she battled to recover her breath.

She recovered in time to fend off a break point to level at 4-4 but at 5-5 a debatable line call went against Peer to bring up 0-40.

Wickmayer converted the second break point to set up the chance to serve out the match.

Two cracking winners gave Peer a glimmer of hope but Wickmayer stayed calm to produce a run of service winners to close out the set on her second match point.

"I didn't play my best tennis," Wickmayer said.

"I made a lot of mistakes, especially at the beginning of the second set. But I kept on fighting on every point, kept on improving and by the end of the second set I was playing really well."

Having been the subject of intense media scrutiny following a ban, since lifted, for breaching drug-testing protocols, Wickmayer was delighted to have maintained her focus on court.

"I am really glad with the way I am playing and the way I have been mentally on the court because it has been a really tough time for me," she said. "It is still not easy knowing I have to play qualies next week [at the Australian Open] so mentally it is not that easy. But I am trying to stay strong and trying to just enjoy being on court."

FLAVIA PENNETTA

Seeded: 1
Ranked: 12
Age: 27
Height: 1.72m
Career earnings: US$3,302,657
Titles: 8

This week

Aces: 9
Double faults: 10
1st serve %: 54
1st serve pts won: 74/98 (76%)
2nd serve pts won: 46/82 (56%)
Service games won: 28/31 (90%)
Break pts saved: 2/5 (40%)
Break pts converted: 20/41 (49%)

Road to the final

Rd 1: bt Jill Craybas (USA) 6-2 6-4
QF: bt Dominika Cibulkova (Svk) 6-1 6-2

Rd 2: bt Carla Suarez Navarro (Esp) 6-2 6-2
SF: bt Francesca Schiavone (Ita) 6-3 6-0

YANINA WICKMAYER

Seeded: 3
Ranked: 16
Age: 20
Height: 1.82m
Career earnings: US$862,892
Titles: 2

This week

Aces: 9
Double faults: 6
1st serve %: 67%
1st serve pts won: 107/152 (70%)
2nd serve pts won: 44/73 (60%)
Service games won: 33/38 (87%)
Break pts saved: 7/12 (58%)
Break pts converted: 17/26 (65%)

Road to the final

Rd 1: bt Julia Goerges (Ger) 6-3 7-5
QF: bt Kimiko Date Krumm (Jap) 6-2 6-2

Rd 2: bt Ioana Raluca Olaru (Rou) 6-2 6-2
SF: bt Shahar Peer (Isr) 6-4 7-5

(Stats courtesy of the Daily Racquet)