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| 24 Jan 2003 | |
| Things are hotting up at Melbourne Park |
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By Eleanor Preston
Marcos Baghdatis and Jo-Wilfried
Tsonga look set to stage a fiery boys’ semi-final at the Australian Open.
Sweltering, sultry conditions at Melbourne Park created tough playing
conditions on quarter-finals day but Baghdatis and Tsonga cruised through their
matches. Baghdatis, who is top seed at the first junior Grand Slam of the year,
outclassed Brendon Evans, beating the American 6-2, 6-2.
Evans has struggled all week with
his serve and against Baghdatis, when faced with some blistering returns of
serve from the Cypriot, those problems came back to haunt him. Tsonga’s victory
was even more emphatic. He demolished Eric Scherer of Germany 6-1, 6-1.
Mathieu Montcourt joined his friend
and doubles partner Tsonga in the semi-finals with a convincing 6-0, 6-2
victory over Phillip Simmonds. He now takes on last year’s ITF junior world
doubles champion Florin Mergea, who knocked out Gael Monfils 6-3, 6-2.
Montcourt, 17, says he has grown in confidence as he has progressed through the
tournament. He has yet to drop a set in four matches.
“I played a very good match today, I
kept everything tight and I didn’t miss anything,” he said. “At the beginning
of the tournament I was very stressed and I didn’t know what to do. Now I am
getting the feeling back and I can feel my form getting better with every
match. Now I am feeling more confident and I am starting the matches much
better. I feel good for tomorrow.”
In the girls’ semi-finals Emma Laine
continued with the rich vein of form she has enjoyed this week, beating
Aleksandra Wozniak 6-2, 6-4. Laine, from Finland, plays Viktoria Kutuzova in
the semis after the Ukrainian beat Eden Marama 7-5, 6-3.
The sixteen-year-old says she
scarcely expected to find herself in the semi-finals. She arrived here unseeded
for her first visit to Melbourne Park and has already knocked out seeds
Katerina Bohmova and Silvana Bauer en route to the last four.
“I actually didn’t expect anything
like this but I know that I practiced hard and I was playing very well,” she
said. “If I hadn’t believed in myself I wouldn’t have come here but I have to
say this has been a surprise even to me.”
She couldn’t be happier on the court
or off it and says she feels very at home here, even though to searing heat of
the Australian summer bears little relationship to conditions in her native
Finland.
“It’s is only 26 degrees in the
summer there, not hot like there. Right now it’s winter and it’s like -30 or
something! I have been here for four
weeks now; it’s just so nice to be here and to be with these people. Everyone
is so nice and I just like it very, very much. I have been to Wimbledon and
Roland Garros but this is much nicer. I don’t know why but I love this
tournament so much.”
Laine is here with just her coach
but she keeps in touch with parents by texting them on her mobile phone. “Every time it is day here it’s
night there or the other way around but whenever I text them they always text back even if it is 2am in the morning. I have managed to speak to them too.
They are very excited. I don’t know how they are following my matches, whether
it is on the internet or not, but they always know my results when I call
them.”
Barbora Strycova and Marta
Domachowska complete the girls’ semifinal line up.
Photographs by Ron Angle
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