Tennis: Steven outlasts big names

By Foster Niumata

What were we thinking? Why did we not see?

How could we forget that the Heineken Open's most popular drawcard isn't now in Melbourne, fiddling with a bung hamstring (Marcelo Rios) or trying to revive past glories (Jim Courier).

He isn't any of the two former top-10 players who have already skedaddled (Wayne Ferreira, Carlos Costa), or one of the seven departed of the lauded 10 in the top-50?

Come on down Brett Steven, for yet again rescuing the tournament he grew up on, the one where he was a ballboy for two years, the one he's played the most, the one in which he has reminded us again why he has been its biggest attraction this decade.

From his fifth quarter-final appearance in seven years, Steven - a 200-to-1 longshot before the Open - cruised into his second semi at Stanley St yesterday by taking another rising star to school.

The day before, Steven slayed the Russian Goliath, Marat Safin.

Yesterday, Argentine baseliner Mariano Zabaleta, another who was a stubble-free tyke kicking soccer and rugby balls when Steven played his first Open, wilted when the New Zealander got in his face and kept hustling. Steven won 6-0 6-4 in only 56 minutes.

"I'm saving this tournament," agreed Steven who, weather permitting, faces a harder-edged opponent in Sjeng Schalken, only 22, but who has been around the block.

They have met once, Steven beating the Dutchman in three at last year's Italian Open after Schalken had beaten Pat Rafter.

Against Zabaleta, Steven thought he might be in for a long day when he opened serving and went to 0-40. But he had walked on relaxed, loose, leaving the tension to a crowd of 3000. He held serve.

Zabaleta had won three points, he won just another six in the set - "pretty much a perfect set," Steven said about taking all six games.

Zabaleta, who had lost the first sets in his previous two matches, settled in, but Steven was already in his groove: three out of four first serves in, slashing volleys, aggressive serve returns, taking the ball early.

He went for the jugular when Zabaleta was serving into the wind at 4-5. Zabaleta rushed and hit the net three times, and between the tramlines once.

Steven and Schalken both know what the other will do: 74th-ranked Schalken will hit deeper, flatter and more winners off the baseline, 100th-ranked Steven will come in and in and in. "We will be cat and mouse," Schalken said.

Schalken mightily impressed in a 55-minute 6-3 6-2 rout of Romanian Andrei Pavel: he served six games out of nine without dropping a point, he lost only four on serve, he converted all three break-chances and gave Pavel nothing but grief.

"I didn't expect this," said Schalken, whose coach, Alex Reynders, preferred to oversee countryman Paul Haarhuis in Sydney.

"Alex is missing all the excitement."

In the quarter-final halted by rain at 3.15pm, eighth seed Dominik Hrbaty was leading second seed Felix Mantilla 6-2 5-5, leaving Mantilla to fume over being left sitting just one umpire warning away from being defaulted.

Serving at 3-2 15-40 in the second, Mantilla was given a second code violation, thus the loss of a point and his serve, for receiving advice from Jordi Vilaro, his coach sitting in the Redwood Stand.

Mantilla argued with French umpire Cedric Mourier and ATP supervisor Gerry Armstrong to no avail. Eighth seed Tommy Haas and Guillaume Raoux are yet to start.