Second seed Argentine Guillermo Coria won a lucky draw to make the semi-finals of the China Open ATP tournament here on Friday, as seventh seed Mikhail Youzhny's comeback run was snapped by a lower back injury when fighting back strongly and leading 1-0 in the decider.

The 23-year-old Youzhny, who is positioned 24th in the ATP Entry Rankings, stormed back into the match after losing the first set 6-4 and beat the 6th-ranked Coria unanswered to 6-1 in the second set.

Breaking Coria in as early as the first game into the decider, Youzhny, who suffered a lower back sprain for a long time, was troubled by his injury and called the doctor for a five-minute treatment before being broken thrice to trail 5-1.

Bearing the pains on his back, the Russian's first serve percentage had declined to 50% after returning to the court, while Coria kept 91% on serving, which led to a 6-1 easy win of the decider for the 23-year-old Argentine.

"The three minutes treatment for Youzhny is not bad for me but may be killing for my opponent. I benifit from it," said Coria.

"Now it's nothing serious, but it's really tough for me on the court. It has been a long time injury which ruled me out of many tournaments," said Youzhny.

With the victory, Coria improved his win-lose record against Youzhny to 5-2 and sets up a semi-final showdown on Saturday with Sweden's veteran Thomas Johansson, the fourth seed here who overcame eighth-seeded Spaniard Carlos Moya 7-6 (3), 6-3 earlier the day.

"Hardcourt is the favorite surface of Johansson, and it will be a difficult task for me to challenge the Swede. I must player better than today when facing Johansson," said Coria.

Keeping two matches in a day made Coria's schedule getting full as his second round matchup against Japanese Toshihide Matsui had been postponed to Friday after rain halted Thursday's play on China Open.

"I just had a good lunch and calmed down for the later match," said Coria, who made brief work of Matsui 6-1, 6-0 at Friday noon.

(Xinhua News Agency September 17, 2005)