Late-Night Guga Heroics The Lipton, Monday, March 23 (night session) By Ed Toombs

  No-one can accuse Gustavo Kuerten of not giving fans their money's worth at the Lipton. In the final match of the evening session, the man they call "Guga" was stretched to the limit for the second straight match, winning in a third set tie-break.

  This time, the Brazilian Houdini needed to call on a much higher quality of tennis to escape. His opponent was not qualifier Francisco Roig but the very capable former top-ten player from the Ukraine, 26th-ranked Andrei Medvedev. And the fans who stayed a 7-6 (7-5).

  After a slow start, Medvedev began lifting his game to Kuerten's level and delivering the punishing forehand returns and deep, heavy baseline drives we saw when he was a feared young gun on the tour. Kuerten played some inspired tennis himself. His backha

  In the tense third set, Guga got his nose in fron, 3-1, but blew the lead and tossed his racquet in anger. Exploding blasts from the baseline, Medvedev won three straight games and Kuerten found himself serving down 3-4, 15-30. The pro-Kuerten crowd, sens

  Our warriors then held serve until the tie-break, both men putting on a festival of big serves, great groundies, volleys and drop shots. The crowd lapped it all up eagerly.

  Guga took a quick 3-0 lead in the tie-break, but Andrei came back to level at 5-5 with a risky cross-court forehand that appeared to touch the intersection of sideline and baseline. But that was his last point of the match. Serving at 5-6, a Medvedev fore

  Kuerten is now through to the fourth round, where he will meet a dangerous opponent, Nicolas Kiefer. The 20-year-old German is fresh off an upset win over Jonas Bjorkman, and the match could be another nail-biter for Guga.
 

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