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| 26 Jan 2001 | |
| Valent, Dlhopolcova Fall in Australian Open Quarters |
By Kim Trengove
The boys’ field at the Australian Open Junior Championships today lost its second seed. Roman Valent from Switzerland teetered on the brink of defeat when rain fell across Melbourne Park but still could not arrest Michal Kokta’s momentum on resumption of play. The No.8 seeded Czech drove home a 6-4, 6-4 victory and will challenge No.5 Yeu-Tzuoo Wang for a place in Sunday’s finals.
Wang had a close encounter with fourth seeded Ytai Abougzir. Their first set went down to the wire with the American coming out a 7-4 point winner but Wang recovered to seize the match 6-7, 6-2, 6-3.
Giles Muller, 17, was one of the first players to complete his quarter-final, comfortably beating No.7 seed Luciano Vitullo from Argentina 6-3, 6-2. He will meet Janko Tipsarevic in the semis after the top seed survived a nail-biting stoush with Simon Stadler, winning 6-1, 2-6, 6-3.
Muller hails from Luxembourg and hasn’t dropped a set all week, relying on a massive serve and solid groundstrokes to do most of the damage. "All the matches are very close now," he said, adding that the key to his continued success was staying calm. "If I start throwing my racquet and shouting, it’s a bad sign," he noted.
There were some unexpected results in the girls’ quarter-finals. No.3 seed Lenka Dlhopolcova from the Slovak Republic was beaten in two tiebreak sets by Swedish teenager Sofia Arvidsson, the sixth seed. Arvidsson had a brilliant season in 2000, moving her ITF ranking to 16 on the strength of four tournament wins and a quarter-final showing at the US Open Junior Championships.
She will play Sunitha Rao, who came from a set down to beat plucky Su-Wei Hsieh 4-6, 6-2, 6-2. Fellow American Ashley Harkleroad, who survived a first set slump in form to defeat Claudine Schaul 7-5, 6-2, joined Rao in the semi-finals.
Her semi-final opponent is top seed Jelena Jankovic, who is settling into the tournament in the nick of time and scored an impressive 6-3, 6-1 victory over unseeded Joanna Sakowicz.
Her next match against Harkleroad is sure to draw a healthy crowd, as the American continues to attract publicity for her beauty as much as her tennis. Asked how she felt about being compared to Anna Kournikova, Harkleroad told a local newspaper reporter, "It’s okay with me. In the US they have started to compare me with her. At the moment, I’m pretty well known in Chattanooga but nowhere else. All I want to have is a successful tennis career and that’s what I’m trying to achieve.">>www.ausopen.org
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