Rafter Has No Problem Beating One of His Countrymen

Patrick Rafter defeated Lleyton Hewitt, 6-4, 6-3, in an all-Australian semifinal Saturday in the Tennis Masters Series Cincinnati at Mason, Ohio.

Rafter will play either top-ranked Gustavo Kuerten or Tim Henman for the championship. The semifinal between Kuerten and Henman was suspended late Saturday because of rain. Kuerten won the first set, and Henman leads, 5-1, in the second.

Rafter and Hewitt had played each other twice previously and Hewitt won both matches, in 1999.

This time, Hewitt could not handle Rafter’s pressure tactics and superior shot placement.

“He’s probably playing the best tennis he’s ever played,” Hewitt said.

“He’s playing maybe as good as anyone in the world right now.”

The hip injury that sidelined Magnus Norman for several weeks this year might knock the Swedish tennis player out of the U.S. Open and the Davis Cup semifinals.

Norman, 25, returned to Sweden after losing, 6-4, 6-1, to Hewitt in the first round in Cincinnati Wednesday.

Hockey

Dominik Hasek said he’s gradually recovering from a mysterious illness that forced him to be hospitalized for two weeks in his native Czech Republic.

Hasek, 36, was admitted to a hospital July 5 in his hometown of Pardubice for treatment of an unspecified illness that gave him severe pain in his joints.

“Sometimes I was not able to walk to the bathroom or brush my teeth,” he said in an interview published Saturday in the Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny.

Pittsburgh Penguin center Jan Hrdina will earn $2.25 million over the next two seasons based on an arbitration ruling.

Hrdina, who will receive $1 million next season and $1.25 million in the 2002-2003 season, had 15 goals and 28 assists last year.

Boston Bruin forward Brian Rolston avoided arbitration by signing a two-year contract to stay with the team.

Jurisprudence

Former boxing champion Pernell Whitaker was on his way to jail for two traffic convictions when officers searching his belongings found cocaine, according to the Virginia Beach, Va., sheriff’s office.

Whitaker, 37, was charged with possession of a controlled substance.

The former Olympic gold medalist was sentenced to four days in jail Friday after pleading guilty to speeding and driving without a valid license.

Deputies were taking an inventory of Whitaker’s possessions when a small bag containing a suspicious substance fell out of his money roll, sheriff’s office spokeswoman Paula Miller said.

A state trooper was called to test the substance, which was found to be cocaine, she said.

University of Wisconsin officials told the NCAA’s Infractions Committee that self-imposed penalties for a shoe-buying scandal should be enough.

“That was the hope,” Wisconsin Chancellor John Wiley said. “That was the intention.”

In April, the university placed itself on three years’ probation, penalized itself $150,000 that it will pay the NCAA and stripped five scholarships over the next three years--four from football and one from men’s basketball.

The university found that 157 athletes in 14 sports violated NCAA rules by accepting at least $23,000 in unadvertised discounts and, in some cases, no-interest credit arrangements that weren’t generally available to other students at a discount shoe store 25 miles northwest of Madison.

No decision from the NCAA is expected for about eight weeks.

Miscellany

Justin Dumais won his sixth and seventh national titles, taking the three-meter springboard and teaming with brother Troy to win the synchronized three-meter springboard in the U.S. Summer National Diving Championships at Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Trisha Tumlinson won the women’s platform, and Sara Reiling and Crystal Gregory won the women’s synchronized platform.

Tasha Schwikert won her first national title in the U.S. Gymnastics Championships at Philadelphia. Schwikert finished with 74.912 points, 1.325 points ahead of Tabitha Yim.

Her lowest score Saturday was a 9.1 on the uneven bars, and that was still good enough to tie the high score of the night on the apparatus.

Yim, competing her first year as a senior, finished with 73.587 points. Mohini Bhardwaj, an 11-time All-American at UCLA, was third with 72.487.

The top three automatically qualified for the world championships, Oct. 28-Nov. 4 in Ghent, Belgium.

The other three gymnasts, to be picked by a selection committee, will be announced today.

Duke’s Carlos Boozer scored 29 points--including 15 of 17 free throws--and grabbed nine rebounds as the United States survived a late scare to advance to the finals of the World Under-21 Basketball Championships with a 95-90 victory over Argentina at Saitama, Japan.

France’s Laurent Jalabert won the San Sebastian Classic, taking the sixth round of the cycling World Cup in 5 hours 17 minutes 54 seconds at San Sebastian, Spain.