MONTE CARLO, 17 April 2005 — Spain’s Rafael Nadal stormed back to beat French sensation Richard Gasquet yesterday and set up a Monte Carlo Masters final against defending champion Guillermo Coria.

Eleventh seed Nadal, the most consistent player on clay this year, ended Gasquet’s amazing run with a 6-7, 6-4, 6-3 victory in an absorbing battle between the two 18-year-olds.

Earlier on a cool and blustery day at the Country Club Argentine Coria came through a scrappy contest against twice former winner Juan Carlos Ferrero, winning 6-2, 7-5.

Nadal, two weeks older than Gasquet, is the first teenager to reach the Monte Carlo final since Andrei Medvedev in 1994 but he needed to be at his tenacious best to beat the French qualifier who ended Roger Federer’s 25-match winning streak the previous day.

To a dramatic backdrop of waves crashing against the Riviera coast, the two young guns pounded each other for nearly three hours of enthralling clay-court tennis.

While the earlier semifinal between the past champions had done little to warm the shivering fans, Nadal and Gasquet had them on the edge of their seats.

Davenport Injury Puts Henin-Hardenne Into Semis

In Charleston, South Carolina, Lindsay Davenport’s hopes of winning back-to-back clay-court titles for the first time ended on Friday when she retired injured from her Family Circle Cup quarterfinal against Justine Henin-Hardenne.

The world No. 1 had treatment to her right hip midway through the first set and, after Henin-Hardenne leveled, she quit when trailing 1-0 in the third set.

Davenport said she first felt the injury on Thursday night, and then aggravated it running for a ball in the second game of the match. Henin-Hardenne will meet Tatiana Golovin of France in the semifinals after the 17-year-old continued her good run with a 7-5, 6-3 victory over seventh seed Nadia Petrova of Russia.

Second seed Elena Dementieva sent down 17 double faults but still scrambled past Katarina Srebotnik of Slovenia 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 in a match containing 20 breaks of serve.

The Russian looked on her way out at 4-1 down in the third set but as Srebotnik tightened up, Dementieva battled back superbly to win five games in succession.

In the semifinals, Dementieva will be looking for a revenge victory over eighth seeded Patty Schnyder after the Swiss ended the run of unseeded 15-year-old Czech Nicole Vaidisova 6-3, 6-2. Schnyder came from 6-4 4-0 down to beat Dementieva in the fourth round of the Australian Open in January.