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| 27 Jan 2001 | |
| Top Seeds Line Up Wang and Arvidsson for Final Clash |
By Kim Trengove
History will be made at Melbourne Park tomorrow if Yugoslavian top seeds Jelena Jankovic and Janko Tipsarevic can take out the Australian Junior Championships.
This event has never yielded a champion from Yugoslavia before in the juniors, let alone two in one year. Nor has there been a girls’ winner from Sweden or a male champion from Taiwan, so Sofia Arvidsson and Yeu-Tzuoo Wang will be striking out for their own slice of history.
Wang is currently ranked No.10 in the ITF world junior rankings and last year, at the age of 15, he competed in all four junior grand slam tournaments. Wang’s best result was reaching the Round of 16 at Wimbledon, after which he won the Canadian Open Junior Tennis Championships. Seeded No.5 in Melbourne this week, Wang has dropped only one set, and that was to No.4 seed Ytai Abougzir in the quarter-finals.
Today, he played solidly against Michal Kokta from Czech Republic, winning 6-3, 6-3 and committing a mere 13 unforced errors to Kokta’s massive 41. The match took little over an hour, whilst Tipsarevic was extended to three sets by Gilles Muller from Luxembourg. Muller got off to a creaky start, let-down by his normally deadly serve.
Upon hitting his fourth double fault to give Tipsarevic a double-break in the first set, he flung his racquet towards his chair. Meanwhile, the No.1 seed kept his cool and nabbed the first set 6-1 in 21 minutes.
Muller was more forceful in the second set but slumped again in the third. He hit 38 winners throughout the match but committed 53 unforced errors and only broke Tipsarevic twice while the Yugoslav cracked Muller’s serve six times.
In the girls’ semi-finals, Jankovic led American Ashley Harkleroad from beginning to end and showed far greater consistency. Harkleroad broke her opponent’s serve at the 11th hour, but could not hold her own at 3-6, 4-5. A double-fault gave Jankovic her first match point, after which Harkleroad hit her 22nd forehand wide.
As her dreams of winning the tournament slipped away, compatriot Sunitha Rao fell to Arvidsson 6-2, 2-6, 6-4. Incredibly, Rao had 19 break point opportunities but could convert only six. Arvidsson is the No.6 seed and currently ranked No.16 in the world.
The boys’ doubles final was completed later in the afternoon with unseeded Abougzir and Luciano Vitullo triumphing over sixth seeded Frank Dancevic and Giovanni Lapentti 6-4, 7-6. The girls’ final will take place tomorrow when top seeds Barbora Strycova and Petra Cetkovska meet unseeded pair, Anna Bastrikova and Svetlana Kuznetsova. www.ausopen.org
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