| |
Excuse me ladies Becker stages dramatic comeback on 'Ladies Day'
Posted: Tuesday June 22, 1999 03:42 PM
LONDON (Reuters) -- Pat Rafter, Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Andre Agassi whistled into the second round at Wimbledon on Tuesday with the minimum of fuss. The second day of the championships is "Ladies' Day" -- the fiercely traditionalist All England Club eschews the word "women" -- and the top male seeds obliged by not upstaging their female counterparts. Except Boris Becker, that is. The dean of them all needed five sets and nearly four hours to beat British wild card Miles MacLagan 5-7, 6-7, 6-4, 7-5, 6-2. Wife Barbara, seven months pregnant, abandoned the courtside in the fourth set, unable to take the strain. Becker is allowed to break the rules at Wimbledon. The veteran German, champion three times in the 1980s, is such a crowd favorite that organizers would surely have wept to lose him so early in his final tournament. Becker, unseeded now at 31, came back from two sets down and saved three match points in the fourth set before beating MacLagan, who is ranked 241 places below him. Eighth seed Todd Martin was another man who failed to follow the script, losing tiebreaks in the first two sets before recovering to beat Hendrik Dreekmann of Germany 6-7, 6-7, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4. Elsewhere, the leading men went about their day's work in more restrained fashion. Second seed Pat Rafter followed Monday victor Pete Sampras into the second round with a swift 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 win over Italian qualifier Cristiano Caratti. Rafter now faces doubles partner Jonas Bjorkman. "We'll probably keep trying to hit each other on the back of the head when we play our doubles tomorrow," he joked. Rafter, U.S. Open champion for the last two years, passed the time waiting to go out on Court One by watching Australian compatriot Jelena Dokic beat women's world number one Martina Hingis in one of the biggest upsets in Wimbledon history. "All the Aussies were watching," he said. "She played fantastically." Kafelnikov, the third seed, paid only a fleeting visit to the ground on Tuesday to finish off Swede Magnus Larsson in a first-round match that had been suspended at 5-5 in the fifth set as darkness fell on Monday. The Russian, who was world number one until nine days ago, spent five minutes warming up and just five more winning two games to polish off Larsson 6-7, 7-5, 7-6, 4-6, 7-5. Kafelnikov now meets Thai qualifier Paradorn Srichaphan. French Open winner Agassi beat Romanian Andrei Pavel 6-1, 6-2, 6-3 on Centre Court, faltering only once when he was broken as he served for the match at 5-2. But the American fourth seed, champion here in 1992, broke straight back to take the match. "It's hard not to be confident," said Agassi, who said he had not had time for his Roland Garros victory to sink in. "But it's not easy to stay focused if you allow yourself to be distracted by other achievements." Another former champion, 1996 winner Richard Krajicek, also enjoyed a straight-sets victory, 6-2, 6-3, 6-1 over Norwegian Christian Ruud. Brazilian Gustavo Kuerten, seeded 11th, celebrated his first career victory on grass when he beat Briton Chris Wilkinson 6-4, 6-4, 6-4.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. | |||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 1999 CNN/SI. A Time Warner Company. Terms under which this service is provided to you.
| |||||||||||||||||
