Romana saves host's face at Challenger

JAKARTA (JP): Romana Tedjakusuma salvaged Indonesia's pride at the Women's Challenger tennis championships as her solid partnership with South Korean Park Sung-hee upset the Slovakian third seeded pair of Tina Krizan and Patricia Markova in their second round battle yesterday.

Romana, whose made an early exit in the singles, and Park scored a 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 win to gain a semifinal berth in the US$50,000 tournament. The mixed nationality duo aim to continue their giant-killing run when they meet second seeds Yone Kamio and Naoko Kijimuta of Japan in today's semifinals.

The Japanese doubles proved too strong for American Corina Moriaru and Daphne van der Zande of Belgium, who showed no mercy in their 6-0, 6-0 win.

Romana's national doubles partner, Natalia Soetrisno, fought tooth and nail with her Australian ally Shannon Peters but they weren't enough to tame the other Japanese pair Hiromi Nagano and Yuka Tanaka. Natalia and Peters fell 6-7 (3-7), 6-4, 7-5 in a marathon match which saw a downpour of broken services. The Japanese broke their opponents' services five times but also dropped five services.

Nagano and Tanaka set up a semifinal clash against Australian top seeds Catherine Barclay and Kerry-Anne Guse who disposed of Hong Kong's Tan Ming and Australian Kristin Godridge 6-2, 6-0.

Earlier yesterday, Nagano sailed to a 6-2, 6-4 victory over Godridge in their singles second round match. Yesterday's singles contest, however, belonged to Austrian Andrea Tunko when Romana's conqueror blasted her way to the third round with an upset 7-6 (7-4), 1-6, 7-5 win over Kirrily Sharpe of Australia. (amd)