He celebrated with a jubilant air punch when Norman sent a forehand long on match point

He celebrated with a jubilant air punch when Norman sent a forehand long on match point.Hewitt, who was on a 13-match winning stretch and was leading the ATP Champions Race until he lost to Norman at the 2000 Australian Open, said he was in better shape now than he was early last year.”I’m hitting the ball better than I was,” he said, “I haven’t played as many matches, but today I felt like I moved the ball around well, I didn’t make too many errors.”Hewitt, who crushed compatriot Jason Stoltenberg 6-4, 6-0 in the final of 2000 Adidas International, became the third man to win the Sydney title twice.Pete Sampras won back-to-back championships in 1993 and ‘94, while Todd Martin won it in 1996 and again in 1999.Norman, who won five titles last year and a career-high 67 matches, said his “legs weren’t moving very good” after a tough semifinal win Friday against compatriot Bjorkman.”But I feel like my game is coming together even though I lost,” he said.Norman rated Hewitt a strong contender to triumph next week at Melbourne Park.Hewitt “can go all the way, he’s one of the favorites,” Norman said “He’s a big match player, he’s a winner. One day sooner or later he’s going to win a Grand Slam – he’s mentally very strong.”. Anna Kournikova teamed up with Barbara Schett to win the Sydney international doubles title yesterday after parting company with her former partner Martina Hingis. Anna Kournikova teamed up with Barbara Schett to win the Sydney international doubles title yesterday after parting company with her former partner Martina Hingis.
The Russian teenager collected her 13th WTA doubles title and the first with her new Austrian partner when they beat the top-seeded Australian Open champions, Lisa Raymond and Rennae Stubbs, 6-2, 7-5.Hingis announced last week she had decided to end her partnership with Kournikova to link up with Monica Seles.

Hingis and Kournikova won nine titles together including the 1999 Australian Open but went their separate ways after an on-court row during an exhibition tournament in Chile in November.Hingis and Seles were favourites to win in Sydney after they beat Serena and Venus Williams in the first round but eventually withdrew from the competition so Hingis could concentrate on the singles. Kournikova and Schett took the first set of the final at Sydney’s Olympic Park in 26 minutes when Stubbs failed to hold either of her two service games.Kournikova lost her first service game in the second set but the pair broke both Raymond and Stubbs once more to claim their first title together.Hingis was due to play Lindsay Davenport in the singles final after the defending champion, Amelie Mauresmo, pulled out of yesterday’s semi-finals with severe back pain.Hingis beat Conchita Martinez 6-3, 6-2 while Davenport won in a walkover when Mauresmo withdrew on doctor’s orders to set up a repeat of last year’s Australian Open final just two days before the first grand slam of 2001 begins in Melbourne.Hingis hardly broke into a sweat on the Olympic centre court as she breezed past Martinez in just over an hour. The world No 1 has not lost a match so far this year after teaming up with Roger Federer last week to win the Hopman Cup for Switzerland.Mauresmo beat Davenport in last year’s Sydney final but did not win another tournament all year because of her recurring back problem. She is now in danger of missing next week’s Open after aggravating the injury.”I had this problem last year but I thought it was over,” Mauresmo said. “I’m really hoping these two or three days are going to be enough for me to relax and let the pain go but I just don’t really know.”The top seed Mary Pierce was bundled out of the Canberra international 6-2, 6-2 yesterday by her fellow Frenchwoman Sandrine Testud.Pierce, who blamed eye problems for her loss, struggled from the outset and made a high number of unforced errors.”It’s just kind of blurry.. judging the ball I can see, but I have problems judging it,” Pierce said. “I’m going to try to see if I can get some contact lenses to play at night under lights or something like that, and then when I go back to the States I’m going to go see my eye doctor and see what I can do.”Testud, seeded fourth, had never beaten her compatriot before but ended her run of losses with a convincing victory.

She was due to play Justine Henin in last night’s final after the Belgian beat another Frenchwoman Nathalie Dechy 6-2, 6-4.. Greg Rusedski claimed yesterday that having to play three matches in the space of 24 hours cost him any chance of reaching the final of the Heineken Open in Auckland. Greg Rusedski claimed yesterday that having to play three matches in the space of 24 hours cost him any chance of reaching the final of the Heineken Open in Auckland.
After finishing his delayed second-round match against Byron Black just before midnight on Thursday, the British No 2 was back on court yesterday to take on Stefan Koubek in the quarter-finals.While the big-hitting Briton showed no signs of fatigue as he beat the Austrian 6-2, 5-7, 7-5, Rusedski could not carry that momentum into his semi-final against the Spaniard Francisco Clavet later in the day.”It’s pretty tough playing three matches within the space of 24 hours and I did not feel 100 per cent,” said Rusedski after his 6-3, 6-2 defeat “I thought Clavet played very, very well. He makes you play so many balls and is very solid.”Rusedski, though, is pleased with the way his build-up is going for next week’s Australian Open in Melbourne, the first Grand Slam event of the year. “I am fairly happy with my form, but playing so many matches just did not suit me,” he said. Clavet was due to meet Dominic Hrbaty in last night’s final after the Slovakian beat Juan Balcells, of Spain, 7-6, 6-3.Pete Sampras got back to his winning ways at the Kooyong Classic in Melbourne yesterday, ending a run of two defeats.

Beaten by Juan Carlos Ferrero and Pat Rafter earlier in the week, Sampras avoided finishing bottom of the eight contenders by beating Nicolas Kiefer, 6-2, 7-6.Yevgeny Kafelnikov dismissed the emerging Spaniard Ferrero 6-3, 6-4, to propel him into the final of the exhibition event, where he will meet Andre Agassi.. Marat Safin made the most ignominious of exits from the Australian Open last year, fined for “tanking” – not trying – during his first-round defeat by South Africa’s Grant Stafford. A recurring elbow injury permitting, the 20-year-old Russian will return to Melbourne Park on Monday as the No 2 seed, with the US Open title under his belt and a rapidly growing reputation. Marat Safin made the most ignominious of exits from the Australian Open last year, fined for “tanking” – not trying – during his first-round defeat by South Africa’s Grant Stafford. A recurring elbow injury permitting, the 20-year-old Russian will return to Melbourne Park on Monday as the No 2 seed, with the US Open title under his belt and a rapidly growing reputation.
Safin – who chalked up seven Tour victories last year and demolished Pete Sampras in the final at Flushing Meadow – is one of a new generation of gifted young players looking to take over from Sampras, the holder of a record 13 Grand Slam titles, and Andre Agassi, the defending Australian Open champion.The 2001 season, which begins in earnest in Melbourne, could be the one that separates the men from the boys – and the men may not greatly like the result.The seedings tell the story of how much has changed since 12 months ago, when Sampras, now 29, and Agassi, 30, were indisputably the top two players on the men’s tour.

This year Sampras, one of the all-time greats, is ranked No 3, while Agassi languishes at No 6 after a disastrous year exacerbated by family illness.The No 1 seed is Gustavo Kuerten, the 24-year-old Brazilian who, like Safin, was eliminated in the first round last year. He went on to win the French Open and then beat both Sampras and Agassi in the Masters Cup in Lisbon to finish 2000 at the top of the world rankings.Other young talents challenging the domination of the old guard include Lleyton Hewitt, the Australian teenager tipped to be on the verge of a Grand Slam breakthrough, and Roger Federer, the 19-year-old Sydney Olympic semi-finalist who helped to propel Switzerland to victory in the Hopman Cup in Perth last week.There is also Juan Carlos Ferrero, Spain’s 20-year-old Davis Cup hero, who defeated Sampras 6-2, 6-4 in the first round of the Colonial Classic exhibition tournament in Melbourne this week.In the battle between old and new, the Grand Slam score stands at 2-2, thanks to Kuerten’s triumph in Paris and Safin’s in New York, which matched wins by Agassi in Melbourne and Sampras at Wimbledon.Purists might point out that Yevgeny Kafelnikov took the men’s singles title at the Olympics, giving the edge to experience over youth. The industrious Russian is a serious contender for the Open crown, and he says that his preparations for Melbourne – where he won in 1999 and was runner-up last year – have never been better.Britain’s top two players, Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski, need no reminder that the years are ticking by.Henman, seeded No 8, is still chasing his first Grand Slam title. The 26-year-old from Oxfordshire was knocked out of Wimbledon in the fourth round last summer, and he has never progressed beyond the final 16 at Melbourne Park.