Davenport Reigns Despite Delays

Lindsay Davenport spent 10 hours waiting to play her U.S. Open quarterfinal match and 46 minutes rushing through a 6-1, 6-1 conquering of Shinobu Asagoe of Japan.

A storm that dumped more than four inches of rain on Central Park in Manhattan left puddles deep enough to swim in at the United States Tennis Center on Wednesday and washed out the day session.

Davenport, seeded fifth, and Asagoe, ranked No. 62 in the world, had been scheduled to play at 11 a.m. on Arthur Ashe Stadium court. Both players arrived at 9:15 to warm up. They finally got to play at 7:30 p.m. when matches were lined up in a tennis buffet line: Andre Agassi against Roger Federer on Ashe; Davenport and Asagoe on Louis Armstrong; Tim Henman and Dominik Hrbaty on Grandstand; Nadia Petrova and Svetlana Kuznetsova on Court 11.

In the race to the finish, Davenport was the winner. She won the first three games in 12 minutes, never faced a break point and scampered around the court in a controlled frenzy. “I just wanted to get through the match, play smart, not go for too much, see how she came out, and she came out with a lot of errors. At about 6-1, 5-1 I thought, ‘If it rains now, I’m going to die.’ Then I started to hurry it up a bit,” Davenport said.

Second to the finish line was ninth-seeded Kuznetsova. The 19-year-old beat fellow Russian Petrova, seeded 14th, 7-6, 6-3. Davenport, who is in her seventh Open semifinal, will play Kuznetsova; eighth-seeded Jennifer Capriati will play sixth-seeded Elena Dementieva in the other semifinal Friday.

Agassi and Federer had finished three sets and were in the first game of the fourth set when the final rain delay began. After having pressured Federer’s serve consistently in the third set and getting two break points, Agassi lost that set in a sudden turnaround when Federer broke Agassi in the 11th game and held serve in the 12th. When the match resumes, Federer will be ahead, 6-3, 2-6, 7-5. Agassi was serving the first game of the fourth set, and the score was deuce.

Henman, seeded fifth, was well on his way to his first Open semifinal with his 6-1, 7-5, 4-5, 0-15 lead over Hrbaty, seeded 22nd.

Davenport, 28, won her 22nd consecutive match in front of about 300 people. With four quarterfinal matches at once and much of the crowd staying home because of the weather, Davenport and Asagoe spent the first three games stopping and starting and waiting for the fans to wander around and find the best seat.

At one point Davenport appealed to the chair umpire to ask the ushers to hold up the entering fans. She was told there were no ushers. “No ushers for a U.S. Open quarterfinal?” she said.

But later Davenport figured she was better off having played on any court with disturbances, because the weather report for today was also not good.

“I just didn’t care if there was 100 people there or 10 people. I just wanted to play and get through this one. I wanted any court, any time. I didn’t want to have to come back here and possibly go through the same thing,” Davenport said.

Kuznetsova, who has never played Davenport, said it had been a hard day for her.

She had played a three-set doubles match Tuesday evening, and Kuznetsova said, “We came to the club, we had some time to warm up, like half an hour, before showers started.

“After that it was like in and out, in and out. They were going, ‘You’re going on in 20 minutes, 10 minutes, no, it’s rain again, back. It was kind of very difficult.”

Today all eight men’s quarterfinalists are on the schedule. Federer-Agassi and Henman-Hrbaty will play to their conclusion during the day session, and fourth-seeded Lleyton Hewitt and Tommy Haas are also on the day schedule. Defending champion Andy Roddick, seeded second, and Sweden’s Joachim Johansson, seeded 28th, are scheduled for the night session.

If there is one.