Surina De Beer, the South African teenager who has reached today's final of the Rover Irish Women's Open championship at Riverview, has a lot to live up to.

Her manager, Kevin Curren, beaten by Boris Becker in the Wimbledon men's final in 1985, describes her as "potentially the best tennis prospect ever to come out of South Africa".

The manner in which she rebuffed the challenge of Germany's Fruzsina Siklosi suggests that there could be a lot to what Curren says.

Despite injury, including a wrist problem, she has appeared in three finals from three starts since resuming her career last month. She beat the talented German 6-2 6-3 in an hour yesterday, making it look easy.

"This was one of the best matches in my career," de Beer said. Siklosi's serve let her down on a number of game points and her double faults betrayed her nervousness. De Beer was not shy in punishing her.

"Surina is like a rough diamond at present," Curren said. "The task is to smooth out the rough parts."

Austria's Patricia Wartusch proved fearless once the first set was out of the way in the second semi-final against Britain's Lorna Woodroffe, the last of the seeds.

Woodroffe, ranked third in Britain, had sufficient service power in the first set to keep the Austrian at bay and Wartusch dropped her serve on set point in the tie-break.

The whole tenor of the match changed subsequently, with Wartusch's serve being the dominant feature. She also diluted Woodroffe's chances on serve by making her play beyond the volley and creating rallies.

Wartusch did not drop a single point on her serve in the second set which she pocketed in 20 minutes for the loss of a game. Her dominance continued in the third, during which Woodroffe muffed her best chance of breaking back, immediately after she had been broken to love in the second game.

Results: Singles, semi-finals - P Wartusch (Aut) bt L Woodroffe (Brit) 6-7 6-1 6-0; S de Beer (RSA) bt F Siklosi (Ger) 6-2 6-3. Doubles, semi-finals - A Augustus (USA) and A Jensen (Aus) bt M Joubert (RSA) and C Watson (Aus) 6-4 6-2; S De Beer (RSA) and E Jelfs (Brit) bt L Gabai (Isr) and T Obziler (Isr) 6-2 6-1.

Wimbledon champion Pete Sampras has withdrawn from the Canadian Open tennis tournament which begins in Montreal on Monday. ATP Tour spokesman Greg Sharko said the world number one player had aggravated a previous arm injury during practice.

The Canadian Open is considered to be the major warm-up event for the US Open.