US Open champion Kim Clijsters got the better of world number one Lindsay Davenport 6-3, 7-5 in a hard-fought Champions Challenge final in Hong Kong on Saturday.

The world number two overcame a nervous start to win the exhibition tournament, featuring four of the world's top 10 women players.

Clijsters said she found it tough to pull away from the 29-year-old American as both players made plenty of errors and struggled to hold serve.

"It was a matter of the person who was making less errors was going to win today," said Clijsters, who beat China National Games champion Zheng Jie and Russian Elena Dementieva to reach the final in the eight-player event.

Clijsters fought back from 3-1 down in the first set to break twice for 5-3 before serving out the set. There were seven breaks of serve in the second set before Davenport broke for 5-3 when Clijsters found the net after a lengthy rally.

But the 22-year-old Belgian recovered to break twice and won with an overhead smash on her own serve after 75 minutes.