SYDNEY, JAN 13: Former world number one Steffi Graf survived a fightback by Serena Williams to earn a meeting with the other half of the family at the Sydney International tennis tournament today.Graf, tuning her game for the Australian Open next week, won the second-round match 6-2, 3-6, 7-5 and next faces Venus Williams in the quarter-finals on Thursday. Venus Williams beat South African Amanda Coetzer 7-6 (7-5), 6-2 to set up the confrontation with Graf.Joining the German sixth seed as second round winners were top seed and world number one Lindsay Davenport, third seed Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and seventh seed Patty Schnyder.Men's top seed Alex Corretja of Spain, fourth seeded Slovak Karol Kucera and seventh seed Albert Costa of Spain also advanced.Sanchez Vicario, the defending champion and third seed, came from a set down to beat Germany's Anke Huber 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 and faces Austrian Barbara Schett in the quarter-finals.Davenport, making her first appearance after a first-round bye, beat fellow American Mary-Joe Fernandez 6-4, 7-6 (8-6) and will play Schnyder.Agassi crushes KordaMELBOURNE: Troubled Czech Petr Korda stumbled badly in his preparation for his Australian Open title defence today when he was thrashed by former world number one Andre Agassi.Korda, at the centre of a growing controversy over a positive steroid test, fell to Agassi 6-2, 6-1 in just 55 minutes in the opening match of the Colonial Classic exhibition tournament in the Melbourne suburb of Kooyong.It was the spindly Czech's second first-round defeat in eight days. He was beaten by unheralded Moroccan Karim Alami in Qatar last week.In the second match at Kooyong, Sweden's Thomas Enqvist produced a solid performance to down erratic Croat Goran Ivanisevic 7-6, 7-6. Korda will meet Ivanisevic in the second day of the round robin stage tomorrow.Defending champion Mark Philippoussis of Australia later downed a tired Tim Henman of Britain 2-6, 6-4, 6-4.Henman only arrived overnight from Doha, where the world number seven lost the final of the Qatar Open to unseeded German Rainer Schuttler.He meets Yevgeny Kafelnikov tomorrow. The Russian was beaten 6-7, 6-3, 7-5 by former French Open champion Michael Chang in the final match of the day.Faulty Kournikova SYDNEY: It's easy to find faults in Anna Kournikova's tennis game.The Russian youngster served up 16 doubles today en route to a 6-1, 6-2 loss against Belgian Dominique Van Roost at the Adidas International. The serving woes followed 23 double faults in her opening match, a win over Italian Silvia Farina.The problem is nothing new for Kournikova, the No 13-ranked player. She served 56 double faults in her last three matches of 1998, all of which were losses.The 17-year-old served four straight double faults to trail 4-1 in the first set, and Van Roost could not believe her luck.Julie in quartersHOBART: Top seed Julie Halard-Decugis of France reached the quarterfinals of the Tasmanian International women's tennis tournament today, beating Ukrainian Elena Tatarkova 6-3, 6-4.Halard-Decugis will play Zimbabwe's Cara Black, who beat eighth seed Fang Li of China 6-3, 6-3.Fourth-seeded Sarah Pitkowski of France made it, beating Israel's Anna Smashnova 6-2, 4-6, 6-1 in a long baseline duel.In the other second-round match today, Amy Frazier of the United States won through to the quarterfinals with a 6-1, 3-6, 6-4 win over Australian Nicole Pratt.
