Tennis: Russian ends his torment

TENNIS

YEVGENY KAFELNIKOV, the Australian Open champion, ended a run of eight first-round defeats by overcoming Wayne Black of Zimbabwe 0-6, 6-2, 6-4 at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic in Washington.

"The weather here is extremely humid, it's so brutal," said the top-seeded Kafelnikov after his victory on Tuesday. "I'm happy I got through. I tried not to pay attention to the heat. It wasn't a great start but the bottom line is I got the job done. The first round is always difficult."

The former world No 1 seems to have put his spring slump behind him, reaching the semi-finals at the Generali Open in Austria and the ATP Championship in Cincinnati and the final of the Canadian Open in Montreal. Back on his favourite surface after a disastrous clay-court season, Kafelnikov was blown out of the first set in under 20 minutes as he was broken three times. But the 25-year-old Russian bounced back at the start of the second, immediately breaking Black, and eventually opening up a 4-1 lead with another break. He closed out the set by coming back from 0-40.

The third set was tighter but Kafelnikov achieved the only break in the fifth game and was rarely tested on his serve after that. He credited the win to his coach, Larry Stefanki, who started working with him at the beginning of the year.

"After losing the first set, in other circumstances and in other times I wouldn't have tried the rest of the match," Kafelnikov said. "But this situation forced me to compete hard."

In the day's final match, the fourth seeded Todd Martin had a 6-4, 6- 4 win over Kristian Pless of Denmark.

Playing in his first match since undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery six weeks ago, the fifth seed, Mark Philippoussis of Australia, fell to Arnaud Di Pasquale, of France, 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 in the second round of the RCA Championships in Indianapolis. Philippoussis was leading the world No 1 Pete Sampras by a set in the quarter-finals of Wimbledon when he sustained the knee injury.

"This was my first surgery and I had to deal with that," said Philippoussis, who was not sure until Friday that he would actually play in Indianapolis. "It [the injury] has a lot to do with not winning, but I'm happy I walked off court without another injury."

Two former French Open champions - third seed Gustavo Kuerten and fourth seed Carlos Moya - were second-round winners on Tuesday. Kuerten, the 1997 French champion, beat Denmark's Sjeng Schalken 6-4, 6-2 while Moya, who won in Paris in 1998, struggled to outlast Daniel Vacek of the Czech Republic 1-6, 6-4, 7-6.