The hands of destiny's clock moved smoothly on yesterday towards a Pete SamprasPetr Korda semi-final show down here in Melbourne next week. Ever since Korda knocked Sampras out of the US Open last year, robbing him of his title, the world number one has been itching to lock horns again with the supremely gifted Czech.
Korda is probably the only player in the current top 10 to present the American with a genuine challenge. The core of any sport is competition, and in the men's game there really is not that much for Sampras.
Korda's career has been one of underachievement. He was runner-up to Jim Courier in the 1992 French Open, yet since then has singularly under-performed, given his consummate talent.
The 6 ft 3 in left-hander, with the neck of a giraffe and not an ounce of spare flesh on his frame, has been a slave to injury and illness, playing mind games with himself that have inevitably led to self-defeat.
He won the ridiculously lucrative Grand Slam Cup in 1993, beating Germany's Michael Stich, and this may have sated his appetite prematurely. Money has been the ruination of many promising tennis careers, notably those of eastern Europeans.
By 1995, Korda was close to quitting until Tony Pickard, now Greg Rusedski's coach, persuaded him to have a nagging and debilitating groin injury operated on. "I couldn't face the word `surgery'. I had kept playing for 21/2 years with painkillers. Once Tony found out, he packed my bags, put me in a car and in two days I was on the surgeon's table."
Korda's comeback was a little slower than he expected, but now he is playing completely pain-free and began the year with victory in Doha. Yesterday, on his 30th birthday, he comfortably saw off his third-round opponent, the American Vince Spadea, wining 6-2, 7-6, 6-2.
Tomorrow he will play Cedric Pioline, last year's beaten Wimbledon finalist, for a place in the quarter-finals. The Frenchman progressed by easily eliminating the 11th seed, Spain's Alex Corretja, 6-2, 6-1, 6-4.
Sampras defeated the Swede Magnus Gustafsson 7-5, 6-3, 6-4 - a "useful work-out", he called it - and now faces for the first time Morocco's Hicham Arazi, a quarter-finalist at last year's French Open.
The big surprise on the tournament's fifth day was the thirdround defeat of Croatia's Iva Majoli, the woman who stopped Martina Hingis winning all four major titles last year when she beat the Swiss at Roland Garros.
Majoli lost 6-0, 6-2 to the delightfully modest Tamarine Tanasugarn, a 20-year-old American-born Thai playing her fifth Grand Slam. "I'm totally shocked," said the number four seed, who could find no explanation for her inability to hit the ball in anything like the direction intended.
Former champion Andre Agassi marched into the fourth round with an impressive straight sets victory over Italy's Andrea Gaudenzi early this morning.
Agassi won 17 of the first 18 points before taking the first set 62.
