Justine warms up for Oz Open with Sydney crown

SYDNEY, january 11: Justine Henin won her 28th match in a row, beating Svetlana Kuznetsova 4-6, 6-2, 6-4 in the Sydney International final Friday after falling behind 3-0 in the deciding set.

Henin lost her service without taking a point in the second game of the third set, but Kuznetsova did the same two games later to allow the Belgian player to pull back on serve at 3-3. Henin broke Kuznetsova’s serve at 4-4 in the third set, then held serve and won on her first match point.

The Belgian’s last loss was in the Wimbledon semi-finals. Last year, she won both the French Open and US Open and returned to No. 1 in the rankings.

She’ll try to extend the streak to 29 in the first round of the Australian Open early next week when she plays Aiko Nakamura of Japan.

Earlier, Russian Dmitry Tursunov and Australian Chris Guccione scored semi-final victories Friday to advance to Saturday’s men’s final. Tursunov beat France’s Fabrice Santoro 6-3, 7-6 (4) while Guccione defeated Radek Stepanek of the Czech Republic 7-6 (5), 3-6, 6-4.

It will be Guccione’s first ATP Tour final and his also his first match against Tursunov, the California-based Russian. It is the first Sydney men’s final since 2000 without seeded players. “It’s the perfect start to the year really — confidence beating those top players and match practice before the Aussie Open,” Guccione said. “I hung in there with my serve and took the opportunity at the end when it came.”

Tursunov felt fortunate to have beaten Santoro. “With a player like Fabrice, its very hard to play your best tennis,” Tursunov said. “His strength is to make you play as bad as humanly possible. With him you have just got to take a win in any way.”

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