From Russia With Game

Sure, everyone thought there possibly could be a striking blond Russian teenager in the semifinals here.

It was going to be a brief detour before that ultimate tabloid moment, the supposed upcoming announcement of Anna Kournikova’s engagement to hockey star Pavel Bure.

Or had Sergei Fedorov rallied in overtime?

Instead, the 18-year-old Russian seizing the moment Tuesday is not a fixture on the World Wide Web or a magazine cover girl. But Elena Dementieva does have something that Kournikova doesn’t--a victory over Venus Williams--and she added another item to the list when she reached the semifinals at the Indian Wells Tennis Masters Series.

Dementieva defeated Chanda Rubin, 6-4, 6-1, in 62 minutes in the quarterfinals and will play second-seeded Lindsay Davenport of Newport Beach in the semifinals. Davenport usually has difficulties against Conchita Martinez of Spain, but not on this occasion, winning, 6-2, 6-1. Davenport, leading, 3-2, in the first set, turned up the pressure and won nine of the final 10 games on another hot day at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.

Davenport, on a 14-match winning streak, played Dementieva at the Fed Cup final in September at Palo Alto and won, 6-4, 6-0.

At Indian Wells, though, Dementieva has been getting better with each match. She beat 14th-seeded Anke Huber of Germany in the first round and Magui Serna of Spain in three sets and then took out Nathalie Dechy of France, 7-6 (2), 6-2.

“It’s very exciting,” Dementieva said .”I think it’s good experience for me. It’s the best tournament in my life.”

Said Davenport: “She’s obviously been playing well here. A big thing is to try to attack her serve. When I played her at Stanford, she gave me a lot of double faults. It looks like when she’s serving OK, she has more confidence in the rest of her game. If I can get her thinking about her serving a little bit. . . .

“She hits the ball hard. I’m going to be happy to go back to a player who plays like that than a player who gets a lot of balls back.”

Dementieva is a quick study. One day after the Davenport loss at Stanford, she beat Williams, rallying from a 4-1 third-set deficit. She fell to her knees in celebration and later joked that her parents would not believe the result.

“Now, I believe in myself,” she said. “I think that I can beat such a great player like Venus or the top 10 players. Yes, it’s helped me very much.”

This week, she was excited about doing an on-line chat with the official tournament Web site, giggling and asking what certain words meant. One phrase, “mixing it up,” seemed to intrigue her. Dementieva liked it, and remembered the words Tuesday when she was asked about her tactics against Rubin.

“I play more baseline, try to mix it up, just try to win each of my serves,” she said.

Pleased with her success, she smiled and winked at the journalist who told her the phrase the day before. She had figured out Rubin, and a bit of the English language, all on the same day.