The top-seeded Hingis spent just 44 minutes on court in a 6-1, 6-1 drubbing of the Austrian in the quarter-finals of the Lipton Championships.

``I was playing very focused today,'' said Hingis, who improved to 6-0 against the 20th-ranked Schett with her swift trip to the semifinals.

``It's kind of tough conditions here with the wind and you feel from one side like a weight-lifter, and the other, so easy and loose,'' added Hingis, who mastered the Key Biscayne conditions in 1997 to claim the title that first catapulted her past Steffi Graf to the top of the women's tennis world.

``You have to think, the less errors you make, the better it is for you. I think that is most important in this tournament,'' said the  Swiss teen-ager, who clearly kept to her game plan, making only 13 unforced errors compared to 30 for Schett.

``She's playing very consistently, as always,'' Schett said of Hingis. ``I give her a good chance to win the tournament.''

Hingis will face a far tougher opponent in her next match if red-hot American Serena Williams comes through her quarter-final with ninth seed Amanda Coetzer Wednesday night.

Williams brings a 14-match winning streak into her encounter with Coetzer as she attempts to claim her third consecutive title.

The other women's quarters will be contested Thursday. Serena's older sister, sixth seed and defending champion Venus Williams, takes on fourth seed Jana Novotna, while second seed Lindsay Davenport meets five-time champion Graf.

In men's play, 74th-ranked Sebastien Grosjean claimed the first semifinal berth on offer.

In the half of the draw that lost all of its share of the top 16 seeded players, thanks in part to Grosjean, the Frenchman used a dominating finish to beat 40th-ranked Dominik Hrbaty of Slovakia 6-3, 5-7, 6-1.

It was Grosjean who ended Carlos Moya's brief reign as world number one with his fourth-round upset this week.

Grosjean squandered two match points in the ninth game of the second set. But after Hrbaty forced the third set, he never challenged the Frenchman.

``This is my best tournament,'' Grosjean said. ``I'm playing very well. I'm here with confidence.''