TENNIS ROUNDUP : Top Four Women Get to Semifinals

Steffi Graf and Jennifer Capriati led the top four seeded players in a march to the semifinals of the Family Circle Cup on Friday at Hilton Head, S.C.

It is only the third time in the clay-court tournament’s 21 years that the top four players have all advanced this far. The others were 1979 and 1983.

Graf, top seeded and a three-time winner of the tournament, needed only 50 minutes to defeat 17-year-old American Chanda Rubin, 6-1, 6-2, and No. 2 Arantxa Sanchez Vicario beat Sabine Hack, 6-2, 6-2.

Third-seeded Gabriela Sabatini overcame No. 6 Katerina Maleeva, 6-4, 6-2, and fourth-seeded Capriati was even more dominating against No. 7 Amanda Coetzer, winning the final nine games for a 6-4, 6-0 victory.

The true-to-form results also set up a big name final four, with Graf meeting Sabatini and Sanchez Vicario taking on Capriati in today’s semifinals.

Graf was a late replacement for Monica Seles, who withdrew from the event last week.

Capriati looked in trouble early against Coetzer, ranked No. 10 in the world, losing her serve twice in the first set to trail, 4-3. But that was the last time she was tested.

Sabatini also rebounded in the first set, winning the final two games.

Jim Courier was on form in the quarterfinals of the Salem Open at Osaka, Japan, trouncing Guillaume Raoux of France, 6-4, 6-3.

In other quarterfinal matches, second-seeded Michael Chang lost the second set and struggled through a third-set tiebreaker before defeating Canadian qualifier Greg Rusedski, 6-2, 4-6, 7-6 (7-1).

Fifth-seeded Amos Mansdorf of Israel won by default over Jim Grabb, who retired because of a shoulder injury when Mansdorf led, 3-0, in the first set.

Aaron Krickstein, seeded No. 5, defeated Alex Reichel, 6-4, 6-0, in the quarterfinals of the South African Open at Durban, South Africa.

Top-seeded Wayne Ferreira overcame a poor start to beat unseeded Joern Renzenbrink of Germany, 3-6, 6-1, 6-3. Second-seeded Alexander Volkov of Russia needed less than an hour to beat Lars Jonsson of Sweden, 6-1, 6-2.