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by Prip With the tournament well underway, only four singles matches would be featured for the day. Because of her doubles match later in the day, Monica Seles would be first up on Rod Laver Arena. After her performance in ending Justine Henin's 13-match winning streak, Seles was expected to put in a big performance against Jennifer Capriati, who had actually found herself down 1-5 in the first set against Marta Marrero in the previous round. Monica was indeed ahead and looking good to take the match, with the first set already in her hands and serving ahead at 4-2 with a break of serve. However, Jennifer suddenly decided that she was going to actually play tennis on center court, and just like in her match against Marrero, turned her game around. Making Monica look like she was standing stationary on the court, Jennifer blasted winner after winner to take 8 games in a row before Monica finally held serve to break her losing streak. It was too little too late, though, and Jennifer was doing the most amazing running I'd seen from her in years, maybe ever. She can attribute her improved fitness to trainer Karen Brunette who has her doing, among other things, Tae-Bo. Showing the kind of form she had in the second and third sets, Jennifer could very well be a contender against Lindsay Davenport, who played very lackluster tennis against Anna Kournikova in her night match. Despite the 6-4 6-2 score, Lindsay was trouble by Anna throughout the match, and has to look out for her serve if she is to get through the final two matches. On the men's side, Andre Agassi had absolutely no trouble against Todd Martin, and must still be thanking his lucky stars that he didn't have to play Pete Sampras instead. His chances to defend his title here look increasingly good, and even girlfriend Steffi Graf looked rather relaxed courtside. Pat Rafter had a real scare in the night match against Dominik Hrbaty. He looked like he was really cruising against Dominik in the first set, and was still doing well in the second set, but Dominik started to get some really good serves and returns in, which made all the difference in the world against a player like Pat. He came close to losing it, but Dominik eventually took the tie-breaker 7-4, playing beautiful tennis to pass Pat at the net. Dominik carried on with his big serves and strong returning into the third set, running away with a 4-1 lead and looking like he would be the one to give Pat his farewell match in Melbourne Park. But it was not to be, and by a combination of an increased number of unforced errors from Dominik and smarter serving from Pat, the twelfth seed chipped away at the lead bit by bit, until he brought it to 4-5 and back on serve. From there, Dominik just didn't have it in him any more, and looked like he was trying, but didn't have anything left up his sleeve. Pat, spurred on by the partisan crowd, took 9 games in a row to seal the deal, giving him a match against Andre Agassi on Thursday. In the junior draw, Sasa Tuksar really impressed in his match against top seed Janco Tipsarevic. On the other hand, the top seed really left a bad taste in everyone but his support group's mouths, with a swagger to rival Sean "Puffy" Combs and a mouth that would make even Lleyton Hewitt blush. Tipsarevic eventually won the match 7-6(6) 4-6 6-1, but not before confirming that the junior circuit is seeing a lot of attitude problems these days. Sasa will get a rematch of sorts, though, as he will once again meet Janco in a doubles match tomorrow. The incident of the day came in the girls match between Lenka Dlhopolcova and Anna Bastrikova. Lenka had held control throughout the match (which featured rallies so long Arantxa Sanchez Vicario would have packed up and gone home), but Anna suddenly picked up her game at the very end. The youngster showed a lot of guts, playing hard and taking risks facing a total of 5 match points. On the final deuce, Lenka and Anna were engaged in another baseline battle, and Lenka was doing well to keep herself in the match, when she took a big spill. She had started to move to the left, but found the ball coming to her right, and immediately started to change directions. Unfortunately for her, her shoes didn't have enough traction with the court, and the youngster slid and totally fell sideways. Luckily for her, nothing was hurt but her pride, and she managed to play the next point reasonably well, albeit gingerly, before losing the match and later on playing in the doubles. In men's doubles action, the Black brothers found themselves across the court from one another, and not surpisingly, big brother Byron, teamed with David Prinosil, took the match 6-3 6-4. They'll next meet Americans Justin Gimelstob and Scott Humphries, who received a walkover into the semifinals when Nicolas Lapentti and Carlos Moya withdrew. Meanwhile, on the women's side, the Kournikova/Schett bandwagon will come up against the Williams Show, with Hingis and Seles awaiting the victor in the next round. In the mixed doubles, Rennae Stubbs and Todd Woodbridge continued their bid to defend their title here in Melbourne with a Rod Laver Arena win over Alicia Molik and Sandon Stolle. The # 1 seeds will next face fellow Aussies Rachel McQuillan and Peter Tramacchi. If form holds, Woodbridge/Stubbs will probably meet their first real challenge in the form of Jushua Eagle and Barbara Schett in the semifinals. In the bottom half, the Yugoslavian pairing of Jelena Dokic and Nenad Zimonjic continues to find success, but have a tall order next against third seeds Corina Morariu and Ellis Ferriera. Surprisingly, second seeds (and reigning US Open finalists) Anna Kournikova and Max Mirnyi lost in the first round to David Adams and Amanda Coetzer, which leaves the bottom half wide open. |