Tennis: Korda's career takes another spectacular turn

Petr Korda completed another extraordinary chapter in his comeback yesterday by reaching the Australian Open final. In the women's final, Martina Hingis, the world No 1, will meet Conchita Martinez tomorrow.

Korda, the sixth-seeded Czech, overcame the Slovak Karol Kucera 6-1, 6-4, 1-6, 6-2 and will start the final as the favourite to beat either the ninth seed, Chile's Marcelo Rios, or the Frenchman Nicolas Escude, who play their semi-final today.

There never seems to be a dull moment with Korda. His last appearance in a Grand Slam final came in the 1992 French Open, when he was beaten by Jim Courier. After that his career nosedived, but he has since bounced back in a spectacular way.

He had operations on a hernia and a severe groin problem in 1995 and 1996 that nearly forced him to quit. He came back to beat the world No 1, Pete Sampras, at the US Open last September, only to withdraw from the quarter-final because of illness.

"Now here I'm probably hitting the ball better than ever, moving better than ever," the 30-year-old said.

Kucera may not have been seeded, but he beat Sampras to reach this stage, so Korda can count his 127-minute victory as a feather in his cap. The Czech demonstrated his delight to the fans with typical panache, performing an improvised gymnastic display of three cartwheels, two scissor-kicks and a spreadeagle jump.

"It's my way of expressing how happy I am. I still can't believe it," Korda said. "People can see how well I'm hitting the ball and how I'm enjoying tennis."

As in earlier rounds, Korda suffered a third-set lapse, but in the final set he broke Kucera's first and third service games to clinch victory.

Hingis, the Swiss world No 1, continued her defence of the women's title, with a 6-1, 2-6, 6-1 victory over the 10th seed, Anke Huber, 6-1, 2-6, 6-1. Martinez, the eighth seed, also survived a rocky start to beat the second-seed American, Lindsay Davenport, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3.

Hingis was majestic in the first set of her match, losing just 13 points. She took a 2-0 lead in the second set before Huber rallied, reeling off seven successive games. The German then had two points to go 2-0 up in the third. But Huber's revival ended there. Hingis turned the tide by taking control of the middle of the court and keeping the ball away from Huber's devastating backhand.

Martinez, who failed to win a title in 1997 for the first time in a decade, came back from a set down to triumph in an edgy tussle with Davenport that took 2hr 25min and then said of the final: "Nothing is impossible."

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