Summary Nicol David beat Camille Serme 11-9, 11-7, 13-11 to reach World Championships semi-finals.
CAIRO (AFP) - Top-seeded Nicol David battled hard on Thursday to reach her 11th semi-final in the World Championships.
David, the first player ever to top the world rankings for 100 consecutive months, overcame Camille Serme, the world number six from France, by 11-9, 11-7, 13-11, in an increasingly well-contested match.
Though not always at her best David was playing well enough by the end to harbour strong hopes of regaining the title from England s Laura Massaro on Saturday.
If the 31-year-old Malaysian succeeds in that she will not only extend her all-time record of world titles to eight but become the first player ever to lose and regain the world crown in the same year.
"It was a high intensity match," she said of the 45-minute tussle. "I don t think we stopped for air at all, because it was all go. And I had to find a lot more in that third game."
There was always a feeling that David s exceptional movement would offer an escape if she were to slip into trouble, though it might have been a different kind of match had Serme capitalised on a 9-6 lead in the first game.
That happened at a stage where David was not at her most accurate with her driving and having to work hard physically to stay on terms, and there were briefly memories of the five-game struggle in their last meeting, at the previous world championships in Penang earlier this year.
This time though the world number one got back to 9-9 with the help of some speedy retrieving, whereupon Serme put a backhand sidewall boast down and then a backhand volley into the tin as well, conceding a game in which she had led much of the time.
David applied more pressure in the second game, volleying as often as possible to take time away from Serme, and from 3-3 onwards made better progress.
The champion also had some luck after 8-5, with Serme first suffering a bad bounce, and then missing with a backhand volley drop from a good position on game point.
The third game saw the level of both players go up, the match finishing with a crescendo of fine rallies in which Serme brilliantly saved four match points without ever quite getting her nose in front.
It ended with the Frenchwoman placing a drop shot into the tin, but despite that she received fulsome praise afterwards from David.
"She was playing really strong," David said. "I had to raise my level. To get off against her by three-love takes some doing, so I m really pleased about it."
David will now play Omneya Abdel Kawy in a repeat of the 2010 world final at Sharm El-Sheikh which the Malaysian won in straight games for the chance to extend her all-time record of world titles to eight.
The 10th-seeded Egyptian, possibly the most gifted touch player in the women s game, revelled in cool conditions which encouraged strokes into the front court.
After trailing 0-5 in the first game, Kawy drop-shotted and cross-courted her way to a 12-10, 11-3, 11-4 victory over Low Wee Wern, the seventh-seeded Malaysian.
