With the top three seeds out of contention, it was left to the fourth seed, Ecuador's Nicolas Lapentti, to lead the way into the final of the Japan Open tennis tournament on Saturday, and the world No. 16 duly obliged with a clinical 6-3, 6-4 victory over Slovakia's Dominik Hrbaty.

Lapentti will face Sjeng Schalken in the final at Ariake Colosseum in Tokyo after the 12th-seeded Dutchman edged crowd favorite and No. 8 seed Hitcham Arazi of Morocco 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (9-7) in an engrossing second semifinal that started in pleasant sunshine and ended over 2 1/2 hours later under floodlights with a chilly breeze blowing in off Tokyo Bay.

Lapentti, 24, fired down 10 aces in the match and used a variety of shots to move Hrbaty around the court and kill off the resilient Slovakian.

"I've played Dominik about seven times and won the last four, and you can't overpower him," Lapentti explained. "So I used a lot of sliced and high balls and changes of rhythm."

Lapentti's job was made easier by breaking Hrbaty early in each set, but while his serve was efficient, it wasn't always overpowering. Still, statistics never lie and the Ecuadorean didn't face his two breakpoints until the last game, when his nerves were starting to fray as he tried to finish off the 22-year-old Slovakian.

"When you have three or four matchpoints and you don't close out the match, you get a little tense," Lapentti admitted. "It was a great feeling when he missed that last ball."

Lapentti, a big sushi fan, admitted feeling under the weather earlier in the week, which forced him to avoid the local cuisine in favor of more stable fare.

"I've been eating chicken and rice and clear soup every day with tea and toast for breakfast," he confessed. "If I win this week, I'm going to eat the same thing in Shanghai next week."

Lapentti admitted being a creature of habit, particularly during tournaments. "It's just a matter of routines," he said, adding that he always used the same shower every day. "If it's busy, I'll wait."

When asked if he would use the same shower if the one next to it contained a beautiful woman, the hunk from Guayaquil responded: "If I'm still in the tournament, I'll use my shower. If not, we'll see, but if there's a beautiful woman in the shower in the men's locker room, I can assure you she wouldn't be alone."

The second semifinal was a battle of attrition between two players with finely controlled ground strokes and an awful lot of patience. If nothing else, it demonstrated that men's tennis is not all about big serves.

Schalken and Arazi almost turned the Ariake hard courts into clay with long, probing rallies lit up with bursts of attacking play. Both were supremely efficient at keeping the ball in play and both waited patiently to attack.

"You have to pick the right ball," Schalken explained. "You have to wait until the ball falls short, and that can take a while because Arazi is a very good player from the ground.

"I had to change my game from defending to attacking and I gained more control during the match, but in the end it was like flipping a coin." Indeed, there was very little in it throughout the match. Arazi broke once in the first set and Schalken responded with a single break in the second set.

The marathon third set -- an hour and six minutes -- went with serve until the ninth game when Schalken gained the upper hand. But Arazi broke straight back and even earned two matchpoints in the 12th game that the Dutchman had to save to send the match into a tiebreaker.

Again Arazi had the edge, leading at 5-3 with a serve in hand when what seemed to be an easy backhand volley winner failed to clear the net.

Schalken put the pressure on and leveled the scores at 5, then 6, then 7. An easy forehand earned him his third matchpoint and after a long rally, the Moroccan mishit a forehand wide, putting the Dutchman into the final against his friend Lapentti.

"We are good friends," Schalken noted. "So we will be happy for each other, but you'll see a VERY happy man if I win. He must be in good shape to reach the final so I'll have to concentrate very hard to win."

The pair have a habit of meeting in far-flung places (Indonesia, Slovakia, the United States, Ecuador and now Japan) and Lapentti has a 3-1 edge, although they are 1-1 on hardcourts.

In women's play Saturday, top-seeded Frenchwoman Julie Halard-Decugis beat Thailand's Tamarine Tanasugarn 7-6 (7-5), 6-0 to reach the final against defending champion Amy Frazier of the U.S.