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Moving on Down Under Rafter, Capriati, Davenport, Agassi advance to semifinals
Updated: Tuesday January 23, 2001 9:29 PM
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) - Patrick Rafter makes hard work pay off in his acrobatic attacking. Andre Agassi loves to make opponents labor to defend themselves. The two are headed for a semifinal meeting at the Australian Open after defending champion Agassi sent out Todd Martin 7-5, 6-3, 6-4, and Rafter rebounded from 1-4 in the third set to beat Dominik Hrbaty 6-2, 6-7 (4), 7-5, 6-0 Tuesday. This time, Agassi doesn't have Pete Sampras to worry about. Martin knocked Sampras out in fourth round, after losing to him 13 times in a row. Last year, Agassi's come-from-behind, five-set victory over Sampras was the supreme showdown of the Australian Open. Agassi also has a 7-4 record against Rafter, a two-time U.S. Open champion. But Rafter won their last meeting, in the Wimbledon semifinals last year, and is a heavy local favorite since he is the first Australian since Mark Woodforde in 1996 to reach the semifinals of the home country's Grand Slam tournament. "This is what it feels like, huh?" said Rafter, who never had done better at the Australian than the fourth round in 1995. "It's been a long time. It feels very satisfying being at home doing it." The crowd helps, he said. "You don't get this quite anywhere else, for me at least," he added. In winning 12 of the last 13 games, he also was helped by a collapse by Hrbaty. The No. 14 seed double-faulted at critical times in the third set. He put in only 24 percent of his first serves in the final set. On the women's side, No. 12 Jennifer Capriati rallied from 2-4 in the second set and reached the semifinals here for the second successive year with a 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 victory over four-time Australian Open champion Monica Seles. In a rematch of one of last year's semifinals, she faces defending champion Lindsay Davenport, who beat No. 8 Anna Kournikova 6-4, 6-2. Kournikova, in a Grand Slam quarterfinal for the first time since reaching the semifinals at Wimbledon in 1997, had some chances but made too many errors. Rafter was caught off guard in the second set when Hrbaty, conqueror of U.S. Open champion and No. 2 seed Marat Safin, suddenly switched to a serve-and-volley attack. "I got a little bit frustrated. He got his momentum going. I knew if I could hang in there and break him my serve would hold up," Rafter said. Rafter showed his athletic style on a number of points, lunging to defend and then recovering to attack. Agassi's best demonstration came on match point. Martin hit a good angle volley. Agassi chased it down, blasted a shot that Martin could only block back, and then lobbed over him. Agassi interrupted his match briefly to catch a bug near the baseline and throw it off court. Martin, trailing 30-40 and 1-2 in the final set, waited out the distraction and then served an ace. He then held serve and, three games later, broke Agassi for a 4-3 lead. But Agassi broke right back and went on to win. "I put on a good front," Agassi said of his mercy toward the bug. His tennis, meanwhile, "feels pretty good. I've gotten better as the tournament has gone on," the No. 6 seed said. Agassi's Australian Open triumph last year ended a run of four Grand Slam tournaments where he also won the French and U.S. Opens and was runner-up at Wimbledon. Martin said the Sampras that he beat was out of practice, but "Andre is very much in form. ... Andre thrives on confidence, and he's got plenty of it." "I was beaten today," Martin said. "I certainly didn't lose. I didn't play nearly as well as I had hoped. Most of that is due to the way Andre played." Agassi improved his record against Martin to 13-5. Nobody ever has beaten both Sampras and Agassi at a Grand Slam tournament. Looking ahead to Rafter's serve-and-volley style, Agassi said, "You know he's going to do it, and he still is athlete enough to pull it off, which is incredible." Rafter said that to beat Agassi, "I'm going to have to serve better -- it's that simple -- and probably be a little more inventive from the baseline." Meanwhile, Capriati's victory made her a Grand Slam tournament semifinalist for only the second time since 1991, when she was 15. "It's one of the best matches I've played," said Capriati, now 24. "It kind of reminded me of the old days." She lost the first set after saving seven points in a final game with 22 points and eight deuces, and fell behind in the second. After a double fault gave Seles a 4-2 lead, Capriati hurled her racket to the court, drawing a warning from the umpire. Then she won eight consecutive games. In remaining quarterfinal matches Wednesday, top-seeded Hingis plays No. 6 Serena Williams, and No. 3 Venus Williams meets No. 10 Amanda Coetzer. On the men's side, 1999 champion and 2000 runner-up Yevgeny Kafelnikov plays No. 15 Arnaud Clement, and No. 16 Sebastien Grosjean meets Carlos Moya, who is unseeded but a former No. 1. After Grosjean beat No. 4 Magnus Norman Monday night, all four top men's seeds were gone before the quarterfinals for only the third time in a Grand Slam tournament since the Open era began in 1968.
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