Tennis: Amazing comeback out of 'Girl's Own'

By TERRY MADDAFORD

At a set and 0-5 down a tennis match is all but over. But don't try and tell Anna Smashnova. More importantly, don't even mention it to Spain's Virginia Ruano Pascal.

In one of the most amazing comebacks in the history of the Auckland international tournament, 24-year-old Smashnova yesterday played the longest game of her tennis career to win through to this morning's quarter-final against American Meghann Shaughnessy.

Ruano Pascal took 55 minutes to win the first set 7-5.

Smashnova was spent. She decided to coast a while, even give away the first three games of the second set. Three, however, became five. The ASB Bank Classic fifth seed was staring down the barrel.

"I was not thinking about the score. I was playing it a point at a time," said Israel's highest-ranked player. Down 0-15 in the sixth game as the Spaniard served for the set, Smashnova rallied. At 40-15 she was back in it. A minute later she had won her first game in eight.

She reeled off five more for 6-5. The mind games had already started. Ruano Pascal, needing treatment for seven blisters, called for the trainer. A 10-minute break gave her the chance to regain some lost composure, and she returned to win the 12th game and forced the tiebreak. But Smashnova was on a roll and took it 7-2.

The third set also went to a tiebreak - after Smashnova had come back from 0-2 and 1-3 to lead 5-4 - with Smashnova winning a see-saw battle 7-3 at the end of a 3h 20m marathon.

"That's the longest game I've ever played," said Smashnova, who first played in Auckland as a 15-year-old in qualifying. She has been back three times since making the quarter-finals for the first time six years ago.

Smashnova, currently 47 on the WTA rankings - just below her 42 high (in 1995) - is 50 places higher than Shaughnessy but as results so far have shown, that means nothing.

Top seed Elena Likhovtseva (Russia) had to come from a set down to beat unseeded Katarina Srebotnik while second seed Anne Kremer was taken to a first-set tiebreak before beating Mariana Diaz Oliva in two. The only other seed still in the tournament, Zimbabwe's Cara Black, had to win a second-seed tiebreak to book her quarter-final clash with Likhovtseva.

The qualifiers' run ended without much of a fight yesterday.

Vanessa Webb lost a first-set tiebreak to Shaughnessy after building a handy lead. That effort taking its toll as she bowed out without a yelp in the second.

The diminutive Nuria Llagostera lost the first set of her outer-court battle 6-2 against Miroslav Vavrinec but charged back to take the second 6-0. Vavrinec won five in a row for 5-1 in the third before closing out at 6-3.

The last hopes of a qualifier reaching the last eight ended when Jill Craybas bowed out in straight sets to Paola Suarez.

In tonight's singles Amanda Hopmans will play Vavrinec. This will be followed by the first doubles semifinal.