The writing was on the wall only a couple of games into the match. Patty Schnyder had come with a specific game plan and she executed it to perfection. The fourth seeded Swiss beat China's Zi Yan 6-3, 6-4 in an hour and 15 minutes to advance to the final of the WTA Tier II Bangalore Open on Saturday.
Yan, who had shown tremendous tenacity while ousting the eighth seed Maria Kirilenko and then the top seed Jelena Jankovic in the quarter-final, couldn't counter the experience and the consistency Schnyder brought to the table. Everytime the Swiss looked like losing grip, she made the big shots and the serves count to keep Yan at bay.
"She was giving me a lot of trouble, the ball jumped over my shoulder all the time and I couldn't hit any shots," said Yan, after the match.
Schnyder consistently got the kick serves in and rolled the forehand to draw the errors from the Chinese. The bouncy court also aided Schnyder's game.
"I am very excited that I played well so today," said Schnyder. "I was very focused today. I like the conditions here-- amazing bounce, though I took a few days to get used to it. We don't play on such surfaces a lot of times on tour."
It also looked that the Swiss was reading Yan's second serve like a book. At break point up in the fifth game of the first set, Schnyder, seeing the short second serve stepped aside to take it on the forehand and force an error from the dogged Yan and take a 4-2 lead. The players had earlier exchanged breaks in the first and fourth games.
In keeping with the on-court coaching experiment during the Bangalore WTA, the players promptly called for help between sets.
Yan seemed to have adapted better to Schnyder's heavy hitting in the second set, but she was not moving in, trying to control the points. The Chinese was also not able to take advantage of Schnyder's dropping serve percentage-- the Swiss won 60 per cent of the points on her second serve while Yan managed only 33.
"In the second set I thought I had many chances, but I didn't take it," said Yan.
Schnyder was again the one in lead in the second set while Yan tried to play catch up. Though she leveled the set at 3-3, Yan was broken at love in the eighth game and the tenth games, even as she did a great retrieval job on the Swiss' serve. A double fault from Yan's racquet saw Schnyder set the final clash with one of the Williams sisters.
Serena and Venus take on each other in the other semi-final.
"They are definitely the favourites in the final," said the fourth seed.
"They are champions, two of the top players in the game. I am expecting a big fight if they don't blow me off the court tomorrow, which can happen."