7 - 13 February 2002
Issue No.572
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 7 - 13 February 2002 Issue No.572 |
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Chocolate topping
MARTINA HINGIS claimed another hard- fought victory over Monica Seles on Sunday to win the Pan Pacific Open in Japan for the fourth time in six years.
In a repeat of her Australian Open semi-final against Seles, Hingis, right, successfully tamed the American's big groundstrokes to triumph 7-6, 4-6, 6-3.
The Swiss top seed was playing her third event of the season after a three-month lay-off due to ankle surgery. And she continued her comeback by adding the Tokyo event to her victory in the Sydney International last month.
"I have worked pretty hard after the surgery so this is kind of like the chocolate sauce on top of the vanilla ice cream to finish like this," Hingis said.
"You always have doubts. Sometimes you ask yourself if you are still good enough but now I can set my expectations and goals very high this year."
In Italy, Italy's Davide Sanguinetti overturned the form book to beat Roger Federer in the final of the Milan Indoor ATP tennis tournament.
The Italian, currently ranked 87 on the ATP Tour rankings, defeated Federer, the tournament's second seed, 7-6 (7-2), 4-6, 6-1 on Sunday. "After Australia, I talked to my coach and he told me I needed to find the real Davide inside me and I needed to do it myself," Sanguinetti said. "Coming to play here in Italy puts a little more pressure on me but that was not a problem."
"But playing in Italy changed something. I was more sure of myself inside and felt on equal terms with my opponents." Playing brilliant tennis in front of his home crowd, the Italian pounced on a series of errors from Federer.
The win marked the first ATP title for the 29-year-old after four finals in his career.
Federer, the defending champion, looked totally off his game for much of the match despite breaking Sanguinetti's serve early in the first set.
And 20-year-old Federer's apparent nerves finally boiled over in the seventh game when he was broken by Sanguinetti. From there the Italian easily rounded off the opening set with a 7-2 win in the tiebreak.
Federer settled in the second set, breaking twice to level the match. But, gunning for his second ATP title of the season, he fell apart in the deciding set, falling 4-1 down before Sanguinetti finally rounded off the match.
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