FRENCH OPEN : Yugoslav Derails the Capriati Express

Jennifer Capriati’s Paris adventure ended today, but not without a fight. Monica Seles beat the 14-year-old American on her sixth match point to reach the women’s final of the French Open.

The 16-year-old second seed from Yugoslavia won her 31st match in a row and set up a championship meeting with No. 1 Steffi Graf by beating Capriati, 6-2, 6-2.

Graf, who is looking for her 10th Grand Slam title, took just 63 minutes to beat Czechoslovakia’s Jana Novotna, 6-1, 6-2.

A long forehand by Capriati ended her own incredible run, two victories shy of a Grand Slam title in only her fifth professional tournament.

“I am disappointed because I expected it to be a little closer. Everybody expected it to be a little closer,” said Capriati, 14, the youngest Grand Slam semifinalist. “I was too impatient. It was just good to get to the semifinals.”

Seles said the American could look forward to even better things.

“No one at the age of 14 played as well as she does,” Seles said. “You could see her experience wasn’t there. You could see her game was there.”

The championship on Saturday will be a replay of the final of a clay-court tournament in Berlin three weeks ago, when Seles broke Graf’s 66-match winning streak.

Capriati turned pro in March and has stunned tennis by doing so well. She reached the final of her first professional tournament, came in second in another event and blew through the first five rounds of her first Grand Slam competition without dropping a single set.

She had been expected to give Seles a tougher fight today but her nerves seemed to let her down. Seles rarely needed to call on her full range of shots as Capriati consistently failed to keep the ball in the court in the first set.

“I was making so many errors and that’s why the first set went so quickly,” Capriati said after the 62-minute match.

Seles broke the Florida youngster’s service immediately and was ahead, 3-0, before Capriati broke back, then surrendered only one more game in the first set.

The second set began with five service breaks, though Capriati ought to have held serve in the fifth game. A few line calls also upset the normally unflappable American.

With the crowd on Capriati’s side, Seles needed five match points before sealing the victory.

Capriati was philosophical, praising Seles and blaming herself for playing badly.

“She kept me pinned to the baseline, moving me left and right. I’d seen her play before but I didn’t realize what it would be like on the court,” Capriati said.

Against Novotna, Graf faltered only briefly in the middle of the second set.

“I was leading easily, 6-1, 3-0, and then I maybe lost concentration,” Graf explained.

Graf took the first set in just 26 minutes, dropping only the second game and 17 points in total, then reeled off the first three games of the second set before taking her foot momentarily off the accelerator.

Novotna, with the aid of a Graf double-fault, broke service for the only time in the match and then held her own serve to close to 3-2.

Novotna, who upset fourth-seeded Gabriela Sabatini in the fourth round and eighth-seeded Katerina Maleeva in the quarters, had a chance for 3-3.

But Graf, supremely confident, was not to be further delayed. She finished the match off with a typical sweeping forehand across court to qualify for her fourth consecutive final in Paris.