MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. (AP) Lindsay Davenport, making a comeback from knee surgery, reached her first final of the year with a 6-3, 6-4 semifinal victory over Ai Sugiyama in the JPMorgan Chase Open on Saturday.

Davenport improved to 9-2 playing her third tournament in as many weeks. She was a semifinalist at Stanford and Carlsbad, Calif., in her previous two outings since having left knee surgery in January.

"There's no question I'm tired physically," she said. "Mentally, I'm still excited. I have a chance to win my first title of the year and I didn't think it would come nearly this quick."

She'll face the winner of a night match between No. 4 Jelena Dokic and 12th-seeded Chanda Rubin in Sunday's final at Manhattan Country Club.

It'll be just the fourth time in the tournament's 21-year history that the top two seeds won't meet for the title. It also happened in 1982, '94 and '99, when Serena Williams beat Julie Halard-Decugis.

Davenport has dominated both Dokic and Rubin in her career. She is 7-0 against Dokic, including a 6-2, 6-2 win two weeks ago at Stanford, and is 8-2 against Rubin. Their match last week in Carlsbad went three sets.

Davenport's path to a possible third title in her hometown tournament was cleared after Sugiyama upset No. 2 Jennifer Capriati 6-3, 6-7 (3), 6-2 and Rubin stunned the top-seeded Williams 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 in Friday's quarterfinals.

Sugiyama extended her streak of futility against Davenport to seven matches. The Japanese player, ranked 29th, hasn't beaten her since they first played in 1993. Only two of their matches have gone three sets and not since 1995.

"In the past I've been able to overpower her," Davenport said. "Although I wasn't as successful today, I think I was able to keep the balls deep. She stands right on the baseline, so if you hit them deep, she has a hard time. Overall, it's just a good, solid match for me, and I made it short enough."

Davenport earned the only break of the first set in the second game. Sugiyama fought back from love-40, but sent a forehand long to lose.

The second set was much closer, with five service breaks, three going to Davenport.

"She was hitting very deep and powerful," Sugiyama said. "At first it was hard to find my game against her. I played better at the end of the first and in the second, but it was too late."

Davenport broke Sugiyama to lead 5-2, but then had trouble closing out the match. Davenport trailed love-40 on her serve, got back to 30-40, but Sugiyama's forehand crosscourt winner off Davenport's serve pulled her to 5-3.

"Again I let a lead slip away at the end," she said, "but still able to close it out. I'm glad to have a little bit easier match. I'm glad to get through earlier and go rest."

Sugiyama survived two deuces to hold at 5-4. Davenport again struggled on her serve, even getting called for a foot fault on match point. She trailed love-30, before hitting an 84-mph ace, and capitalizing on three consecutive errors by Sugiyama to win.

"I definitely don't feel that I'm getting a high enough percentage of serves in. We worked on it a little bit in warmup," Davenport said. "The toss isn't right where I want it to be yet."

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