NEWS
OTHER SPORTS
DIARY
PEOPLE
MATCH REPORTS
SLIDE SHOW
ARCHIVES

Graf outlasts Seles, meets Hingis in final

In a match between players with eight titles between them, Steffi Graf outlasted Monica Seles 6-7 (2-7), 6-3, 6-4 today to set up a French Open final showdown against top-ranked Martina Hingis.

Hingis, seeking the only Grand Slam title still missing in her career, beat defending champion Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario 6-3, 6-2 to reach the final.

Graf, a five-time champion, rallied after a strong first set by Seles, who was runner-up last year.

Seles dropped her serve in the opening game of the third set, but got back into the match by breaking Graf's serve in the fourth game.

In the ninth game, Seles made some errors under pressure from Graf, netting an easy overhead, and Graf went a decisive break up. After a Seles return had sailed wide on Graf's first match-point, the German screamed in delight as she reached her first Grand Slam final since 1996.

"The wind was really difficult,'' Seles said. "It was gusty and swirling and it was hard to get into any kind of rhythm. I was fighting Steffi and I was fighting the wind at the same time. The court started slow, but at the end there was hardly any clay left,'' she said.

"It came down to one or two points. Steffi played way better in the last few games and I was too defensive, and that made the difference,'' Seles said.

It was the first match between Seles and Graf since the epic 1992 final here, when Seles scored a 6-2, 3-6, 10-8 victory to win the last of her three straight titles.

In 1993, Seles was stabbed by a deranged Graf fan at a tournament in Hamburg and took two years to return to the game.

Graf, winner of 21 Grand Slam titles, has battled a series of injuries after losing her No. 1 ranking to Hingis in March 1997. She missed eight months between 1997 and 1998. Graf is less than two weeks away from her 30th birthday.

"It's huge,'' Seles said of Graf's achievement. "Among the players we never counted Steffi out.''

All four semi-finalists today have held the No. 1 ranking at various times. Apart from Hingis, the other three had won 11 of the last 12 French Opens.

After a rain storm had delayed the start of the match by 45 minutes, Hingis breezed into a 5-0 lead in the opening set, but then had a brief lapse to allow Sanchez-Vicario to cut the deficit. Hingis regained her composure and won in 63 minutes to reach her second final at Roland Garros.

"I was very focused from the beginning, I played very intelligently,'' Hingis said. "It's this time or never,'' Hingis said. "The other three have won this tournament so they can leave it once for me.''

Hingis took only 15 minutes to grab a 5-0 lead, allowing the Spaniard eight points.

At 30-30 on the Spaniard's serve, one of Hingis' shots was overruled and instead of holding a set point, she was 40-30 down. That decision appeared to unsettle her and Sanchez-Vicario won nine of the next 11 points and three games in a row.

Hingis wasted a set a point and staved off a break point before serving out the set.

Sanchez-Vicario, a three-time champion at Roland Garros, then lost the first four games of the second set and the Swiss was not to be stopped any more.

She hit a forehand winner on her first match point. Hingis has now won 19 of her last 20 matches, all on clay, and has won the last of her 10 matches against Sanchez-Vicario.

Despite a crippling strike by public transport workers, the center court was full at Roland Garros.

The men's semi-finals tomorrow feature three unseeded players. Andre Agassi, at No. 13 the only seeded man left, plays Dominik Hrbaty, and Andrei Medvedev battles Fernando Meligeni.

AP