New York ? Body slumped and eyes vacant, Jennifer Capriati walked off the U.S. Open tennis court stuck in a horrifying rewind, once again within points of her first-ever final only to depart in failure, betrayed by the inability to close out a third-set tiebreaker.

Though no less disappointing to herself or an American tennis public, Lindsay Davenport’s betrayal came in physical form, with a leg injury restricting her movement so severely she barely could get from sideline to sideline. She lost her own three-set semifinal Friday afternoon, a double American setback that set up this season’s second all-Russian Grand Slam final.

Capriati lost her chance to defeat Russian Elena Dementieva despite serving at 6-5 in the third set, where she saved a crucial break point to commit her only double fault of the match. She then dropped the tiebreaker, 7-5. Incredibly, the 28-year-old American couldn’t find a way to take advantage of a ridiculously slow Dementieva serve that rarely reached the 60 mph range, losing the first set, 6-0, taking the second, 6-2, and losing the third, 7-6 (7-5).

“It’s kind of hard to really grasp what happened out there,” a sullen Capriati said.

Davenport lost her chance to defeat Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova when she aggravated what she called a “strain in the groin or hip flexor area” midway through the second set of a match she was controlling, having won the first set, 6-1, and leading in the second, 3-1. She lost the second set, 6-2, took a timeout to have the leg re-taped, but lost the third anyway, 6-4.

“I’m fine with losing, it’s not the losing part. I just wish that I had lost because I was terrible or I didn’t play well and she played great,” Davenport said.