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Trailing 2-0, 4-0 and with her entire game crumbling under the pressure and momentum of a WISPA top-12 opponent playing at her absolute best, No. 1 seed Rachael Grinham displayed the resolve and mental toughness of the two-time early-2000's British Open champion she is and engineered a stirring rally that brought her to a 6-9 3-9 9-5 9-3 9-6 victory over Engy Kheirallah and a spot in Saturday afternoon's final at the Heights Casino Annex, just a few blocks away from the landmark St. George Hotel.

Grinham's final-round opponent will be second seed Natalie Grainger, the 2004 Weymuller champion, who prevailed over fourth seed Annelize Naude 9-1 5-9 9-2 9-1 in a well-played 35-minute match that, however, understandably proved an anticlimactic successor to the intense drama of the 85-minute Grinham-Kheirallah struggle that preceded it.

When Grinham won the first few exchanges of the night, it momentarily appeared that Kheirallah might have been spent by her exhausting five-game quarterfinal win 24 hours earlier over Lauren Briggs. That match consumed more than an hour and a half and featured a number of major momentum turnarounds, a marked contrast to the swiftness with which Grinham had dispatched Sharon Wee less than a half-hour on the adjoining court.

But Grinham squandered her early lead by committing several unforced errors, which seemed to have a liberating effect on Kheirallah and soon unleashed the full splendor of her flowingly graceful style. The willowy young Egyptian glides noiselessly to the ball, exhibiting both a delicate touch and a creativity level that differs from the athleticism of her superbly proportioned opponent, who scrambles fiercely and evinces the full effort she is expending much more noticeably than does Kheirallah.

The latter was clearly carrying the play both in surging through the second half of the first game (from 4-4 to 8-5 and then 9-6) and in mostly dominating the 9-3 second, picking up confidence as she went along and throwing additional points on the pile through a combination of her well-constructed winners and a host of Grinham salvos that with maddening frequency were catching the very top of the tin. In fact, in a post-match interview, a clearly relieved Grinham remarked that she couldn't remember a match in which she hit the very top of the tin as often as she did on this occasion.

It seemed apparent to every one present at the outset of the third game that for Grinham to have any chance of extricating herself from the down-two-love hole she was in, she was going to have to begin the third game strongly.

But, as noted, it was Kheirallah who maintained her superiority, both in controlling the rallies and on the scoreboard, which soon registered 4-0 in her favor.

The degree to which Kheirallah was out-playing her vaunted and highly decorated foe in all facets of the game to this juncture cannot be over-stated: she was achieving greater depth, her shot selection and execution were much better, as was her freedom from the tin. More ominously, even the breaks were all going Kheirallah's way, in the form of several out-of-the-blue winners from inauspicious positions, the most memorable being late in the second game, when Grinham was all over a desperation Kheirallah forehand three-wall that however dead-rolled insolently out of the nick at the smallish Australian's feet.

Grinham later noted that misadventures like the foregoing, buttressed with the many fully conventional exchanges in which she was also mostly coming out on the short end, made her start to believe that "this was a match that Engy was just MEANT to win." But Grinham also had a two-part psychological edge in her favor that subtly began to show itself as she began her rally: first, that she had never lost to Kheirallah in a WISPA ranking tournament, and second, that these two practice and train together enough (since Grinham has been based on Egypt for the past five years) for Kheirallah to know that, no matter how big a deficit she faces, Grinham can be counted on to NEVER give up.

The latter also resorted to a tactical adjustment that paid off handsomely and, in fact, arguably proved the deciding factor in the eventual outcome. Realizing that her uncharacteristically sub-par ground-stroking was enabling Kheirallah to pick balls off at mid-court and impose her accurate short game, and that therefore it was imperative that Kheirallah be kept in the back of the court, Grinham started to hit cross-court lobs at almost every opportunity. These high and wonderfully angled parabolas forced Kheirallah to backpedal and reach high over her head to attempt difficult volleys while also giving Grinham ample time to establish her position at the tee while Kheirallah was forced to wait for the ball to descend.

The high ceilings of the glass-back-wall Annex exhibition court provided a perfect forum for Grinham to employ this stratagem, and the results were stark and almost instantaneous; Kheirallah, her heretofore noteworthy rhythm disrupted by this alteration, either coughed up loose balls for Grinham to exploit or rashly went for winners, many of which rattled off the tin. Tellingly, the 9-1 Grinham run from 0-4 through the remainder of that game was capped off when Kheirallah tried to "steal" a point with a risky serve-return straight drop off an excellent serve and tinned it badly.

The winning streak Grinham had achieved continued through the 9-3 fourth game, as Kheirallah, her frustration growing, stubbornly tried to force shots that simply weren't there and Grinham, who by this time was moving really well, made her opponent pay for every miscue. Grinham is amazing at maneuvering her lithe body into the very corners of the court, and she was getting low enough while retrieving Kheirallah's drop shots to respond with deft cross-court drops that landed for winners.

It is to Kheirallah's credit that she was able to get a second wind, regain her patience after the discouraging middle portion of this match and stop Grinham's momentum long enough to garner a hard-earned 6-4 edge in the fifth game. In fact, when Kheirallah spurted from 3-4 to 6-4 with a series of wall-hugging winners, it conjured up memories of her quarterfinal triumph over Briggs, a match whose fifth stanza had similarly been decided when Kheirallah had broken away (from 5-5 to 8-5, 9-6) in mid-game.

But Kheirallah's hope for a repeat of those recent heroics was not to be realized, as this time it was the veteran Grinham who ground her way through a series of wearing and lengthy all-court exchanges, lobbing Kheirallah into the back recesses of the court, relentlessly running several Kheirallah near-winners down, extemporizing successfully in some cat-and-mouse front-court maneuvering and eventually claiming a 9-6 tally when am fatigued and stretched-out Kheirallah attempted a forehand straight drop shot that barely caught the tin. A soulful performance for both contestants, marked by impeccable sportsmanship throughout and capped off as they embraced at mid-court in celebration of how well they had performed and competed.

Carol Weymuller Open, Heights Casino, Brooklyn New York
SEMIFINAL ROUND RESULTS:

[1] Rachael Grinham (ENG) d [3]Engy Kheirallah (EGY), 6-9 3-9 9-5 9-3 9-6
[2] Natalie Grainger (USA) d [4]Annelize Naude (NL), 9-1 5-9 9-2 9-1