Who says the current crop of Spaniards can’t compete on hardcourt?
French Open champion Carlos Moya is out to disprove that assertion. Moya trampled Sweden’s Magnus Larsson 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 to advance to the U.S. Open semifinals Thursday.
“It means a lot for me,” the 10th-ranked Moya said. “I always say that I want to be (an) all-court player.”
Moya said he was not playing well coming into the tournament but felt his luck began to change when he came back from two sets down to beat Michael Chang in the second round.
“If you tell me at the beginning of the week that I’m going to be in (a) semifinal, I would say, `You’re crazy,’ ” Moya said. “I thought I cannot beat anyone the way I am playing.”
Since then, however, he has survived a tough five-setter with rising U.S. star Jan-Michael Gambill and dispatched his countryman Alex Corretja in straight sets.
Moya’s next opponent will be Australia’s Mark Philippoussis, who reached his first Grand Slam event semifinal with a tense 4-6, 6-3, 6-7, 6-3, 7-6 victory over Sweden’s Thomas Johansson that ended with a 12-10 tiebreaker.
No Spanish man has reached the U.S. Open final since Manuel Orantes, who beat Jimmy Connors in 1975.
Rolling on: The more she wins, the more the homework piles up back home, but Laura Granville is willing to make the trade. Granville, a 17-year-old senior at The Latin School, moved into the semifinals of the Junior U.S. Open Thursday with a 6-2, 6-3 win over wild-card entrant Sara Walker of El Paso, Texas.
“It definitely helped playing in the main draw here, because I was really relaxed coming into this tournament,” Granville said.
Granville earned a wild-card berth into the U.S. Open main draw by winning the national 18-and-under championships in August and is 66th in the International Tennis Federation’s junior rankings. Her next opponent will be 19th-ranked and second-seeded Jelena Dokic of Australia.
Mixing it up: The Williams sisters have another Grand Slam title. Serena and her partner Max Mirnyi of Belarus, who won at Wimbledon earlier this summer, defeated the U.S. team of Lisa Raymond and Patrick Galbraith Thursday for the U.S. Open title. Venus Williams and Justin Gimelstob won at the Australian Open and the French Open.
