Agassi, Hingis keep to script

Rafter, bidding to become the first local player since Pat Cash in 1998 to make the men’s singles final, needed treatment after the fourth set but bravely played on even though he was in obvious discomfort.

The sixth-seeded Agassi will play the winner of Friday’s second semifinal between Frenchmen Arnaud Clement and Sebastien Grosjean in Sunday’s final. The match had been in the balance before Rafter’s right leg started cramping.

The 28-year-old Australian had begun strongly, sending down four aces in his first service game, but the Agassi took the opening set when he claimed the first break of serve in the 11th game after Rafter pushed a backhand long.

Rafter, a dual U.S. Open champion, fought back to take the second set 6-2. He got the first break in the fourth game when Agassi double-faulted then again in the eighth game when he lunged to send a forehand winner cross court. The Australian serve-and-volleyer blasted three aces past Agassi in the 11th game of the third set, taking his total for the match to 19, before taking the tiebreak.

First Slam final for Capriati
Martina Hingis will take on Jennifer Capriati in the Australian Open final after she crushed Venus Williams 6-1, 6-1 on Thursday to reach a personal milestone by beating both Williams sisters in the same tournament.

Capriati also made her own little piece of history when the 12th seed upset defending champion Lindsay Davenport 6-3, 6-4 to reach the final of a Grand Slam event for the first time. The ease of Hingis’s win over Venus was in stark contrast to her three-set epic against Serena Williams on Wednesday, when Serena served for the match before Hingis scrambled back to give herself a shot at the Williams double.

Hingis had three times beaten one Williams sister only to lose to the other later in the tournament, most recently when Serena beat her in the 1999 U.S. Open final after Hingis downed Venus in the semis. “I felt like this time that it was definitely my chance because I felt like I’m In very good shape and I felt like I had it in me,†Hingis said of her Williams double triumph.

Only two players had achieved the feat before Arantxa Sanchez Vicario in Sydney in 1998 and Steffi Graf at the same tournament the following year. Top seed Hingis might never again have such an easy match against a Williams. An erratic Venus effectively gifted her the contest, hitting 38 unforced errors, including 22 in the first set two thirds of all the points Hingis won. “I just had an off day,†third seed Venus said.

“Today I just didn’t seem to do the right things.â€

Capriati, the 1992 Olympic gold medallist, was playing in her fifth Grand Slam semifinal and scored a surprisingly easy victory against a listless and error-prone Davenport, who beat her at the same stage in Melbourne last year. Capriati, 24, threw her arms in the air and cried when Davenport netted a forehand on her second match point to seal her fatein 76 minutes on a hot andhumid centre court.