`Rusty' Seles wins through

MONICA SELES withstood a four-day, four-match endurance test to reach the WTA Lipton Championships semi-finals, but has yet to find satisfaction after a four-month lay-off.

Former world number one Seles rallied to beat seventh seed Irina Spirlea 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 yesterday, advancing to a semi-final tomorrow against a player she has never faced, 11th-seeded Barbara Paulus of Austria.

Paulus took advantage of 31 unforced errors by France's Sandrine Testud and won 13 of 20 second-serve points to dispatch her 6-3, 6-3 in 76 minutes. Testud had toppled second-seeded Spaniard Arantxa Sanchez Vicario on Monday.

Fourth seed Seles, hampered last year by a shoulder injury, is making her 1997 debut after suffering a broken right ring finger last December. She has felt no physical problems in her return at the $1.75 million event.

"I'm pretty rusty," Seles said. "I have trouble closing out some games. The only way I will get out of that is playing more match The way I played, I need work would hit some nice shots and then come apart.

"Unless I am playing a lot of tennis, I still don't feel I have the confidence I need."

Spirlea could tell.

She said Seles would be no match for 16-year-old Swiss prodigy Martina Hingis if they should meet in Saturday's final. "Martina is very confident now and she is playing better than everybody else now," Spirlea said. "She has the game to beat Monica."

Hingis plays American Mary Joe Fernandez in a quarter-final today. Ninth-ranked Spirlea, Romania's first top-10 woman since 1981, had never won a set from Seles in three prior meetings, all last year on carpet.

But she broke the Yugoslavian-born star in the fourth and sixth games of the match. Seles had two break points in the ninth game but squandered them on errant backhands and then hit another wide to drop the first set.

Spirlea broke Seles to open the second set, but she broke back in the next game, again in the sixth and took the eighth with the help of two Spirlea double faults.

Seles has been distracted because Karolj Seles, her father and coach has stomach cancer. "It's really hard. He is such a key part of my life," Seles said.