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by Prip The first day of qualifying in the first Grand Slam of the millennium, and both the men's and women's draws would feature some interesting players. On the women's side, Lina Krasnoroutskaya of Russia, the much-touted 16-year-old, has thus far failed to come up with anything spectacular, and while bound by the Age Eligibility Rules, nothing spectacular is simply not good enough to get places. Seeded third in qualifying behind Alison Bradshaw and Andrea Glass, she hardly blinked against Aussie wildcard Jaslyn Hewitt, whose brother would get through to the semis to play Sebastien Grosjean in Sydney. In fact, the surprises were few in the women's qualifying draw, with the only upsets coming at the bottom of the draw. Not surprisingly, eleventh seed Sandra Cacic fell to rookie Maria Emilia Salerni (who is on the 2001 list of Players to Watch), while Alena Vaskova lost to Saori Obata after putting up a solid performance against Elena Bovina in Sydney. Belgium's Laurence Courtois had a long match before falling 7-5 5-7 7-5 to Dally Randriantefy. Katarina Srebotnik, Sandra Kleinova and Elena Bovina also moved through. On the men's side, the star of qualifying would have to be Goran Ivanisevic. Having had as bad a year as he could have with his shoulder problem, the Croat has been relegated to having to qualify for a Grand Slam event, and even then, found himself only the 11th seed in the draw. Goran, being Goran, played an extremely up-and-down match, eventually losing 7-5 1-6 6-1 to Petr Luxa of the Czech Republic. Add to that Patrick Rafter's announcement of impending retirement and bearing in mind Marat Safin's win over Pete Sampras in the last Grand Slam final, and we have an increasingly clear changing of the guard on the ATP Tour. Perhaps not too soon either, with their 'New Balls Please" campaign going strong. Xavier Malisse, seeded 6th, surely disappointed main squeeze Jennifer Capriati by losing in straight sets to James Blake. Meanwhile, Eric Taino continues to make progress, taking out Kristian Pless in a marathon match that saw a tie-break in the first set and ended at 9-7 in the third. Sebastien Lareau, Laurence Tieleman and Yoon Yong-Il, Attila Savolt and Nicolas Coutelot all failed to make it to the second round, Nicolas falling to Ivo Heuberger in three. Adding a little colour to the day, Stafano Galvani, with his electric blue hair to match girlfriend Tathiana Garbin's purple ponytail, managed to get through to the second round against Jan Hernych. |