MELBOURNE, Australia -- Steffi Graf's nerves frazzled, Mary Pierce's shots misfired and the Australian Open's clashes of champions fizzled.
Monica Seles and Martina Hingis followed their game plans to perfection, both extending impressive Australian winning streaks as they advanced to a semifinal meeting.In a match of two four-time champions, Seles pounded winners down the lines and retrieved some of Graf's best shots in a 7-5, 6-1 victory Wednesday. In 33 Australian Open matches, she has never lost.
Hingis, the two-time defending champion, won her 19th consecutive Australian Open match by outmaneuvering 1995 champion Pierce 6-3, 6-4.
Thursday's other semifinal will be between No. 1 Lindsay Davenport, who won her first Grand Slam event last year in the U.S. Open, and France's Amelie Mauresmo, a former world junior champion.
On the men's side, the last two Americans went out, with 15th-seeded Todd Martin, a 1996 Wimbledon semifinalist, done in by his erratic backhand and No. 10 Yevgeny Kafelnikov's accuracy.
Kafelnikov, the 1996 French Open champion and the only surviving men's seed, won 6-2, 7-6 (7-1), 6-2.
He advanced to a semifinal with 33-ranked Tommy Haas, a German who beat beat American Vince Spadea 7-6 (7-5), 7-5, 6-3. In the other semifinal, Sweden's Thomas Enqvist will face 91-ranked Nicolas Lapentti of Ecuador.
No. 6 Seles and No. 10 Graf started with a heavy-hitting replay of some of their six Grand Slam tournament finals. But that all changed with Graf serving for the first set at 5-4.
Her serve broke down, the rest of her game followed and Seles won eight games in a row before Graf's famed forehand helped her win one last game.
"I missed a couple of close first serves, and then a couple of double faults in between, and gave her so many chances with the second serves," Graf said. "I was thinking, 'What am I doing wrong?' and totally got lost in it."