Tennis: Kuerten into semis with win over Spadea

10.00pm - UPDATED - By DAVE WORSLEY

Third seed Gustavo Kuerten of Brazil took another step towards defending his title with a straight sets quarter-final victory over American fifth seed Vincent Spadea, 6-2 7-6 (4) at the Heineken Open in Auckland today.

There was a delay of over an hour for rain early in the first set but soon afterwards Kuerten picked up the pace of his play while his opponent fell away in intensity.

The match looked set to go into a third when Kuerten found himself 1-4 in the second set as Spadea began dictating play. But the third seed had plenty in the tank, and stepped up another gear to force a tiebreak,
then closed it out with real authority.

Kuerten served seven aces in the match compared to fifth seed Spadea who served just two but had a better first serve percentage.

Kuerten won the match on his winners with a total of 78 points won in the match and plenty of hard-hitting forehands.

He now plays the winner of tonight's quarterfinal between Slovakian Dominik Hrbaty and German Philipp Kohlschreiber which was locked at one set all before wet weather saw the game halted at 9.25pm. It will continue at 11am tomorrow.

Hrbaty won the first set comfortably 6-1 before Kohlschreiber bounced back to win the second 6-3.

Hrbaty was 1-0 up in the third set.