Yevgeny, it's yours!
Kafelnikov dictates pace, wins Australian Open title
Posted: Friday February 12, 1999 09:54 AM
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Enqvist won his second Grand Slam title AP |
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA (CNN/SI) -- Yevgeny Kafelnikov missed the last two Australian Opens due to strange injuries.
This year he was healthy, a tired Pete Sampras was absent and the fifteen other seeded men were eliminated. With that combination of factors, the No. 10 Kafelnikov emerged as champion almost by default.
Kafelnikov, holding the Australian Open trophy high, smiled broadly and thanked Pete Sampras for staying home.
"Pete, it's really a great wonderful feeling," Kafelnikov said. "Thanks for letting me do that."
Kafelnikov's steady baseline play gave him a 4-6, 6-0, 6-3, 7-6 (7-1) victory over an unusually error-prone Thomas Enqvist, who double faulted for the seventh time on match point and made 62 unforced errors.
The Russian played well, if unspectacularly, in the final, committing eight double faults himself, but limiting his unforced errors to 35 to add the Australian title to the French Open championship he won in 1996.
"When I won the first [major title] I wasn't really thinking about it," Kafelnikov said. "It was just a quick moment. Now I can really enjoy it."
Kafelnikov, 24, missed the Australian Open in 1998 after he hurt his left knee in a skiing accident a few weeks earlier. He had to skip the 1997 Australian Open because of a fractured finger suffered in a gym workout.
Enqvist came into the final riding a 12-match winning streak that included victories last week over Australians Patrick Rafter and Mark Philippoussis, the U.S. Open finalists. But despite 19 aces, Enqvist couldn't counter Kafelnikov's deeper, more reliable groundstroke game.
If only Enqvist could have played with the enthusiasm of the dozens of blue-and-yellow painted and garbed Swedes in the crowd, he might have had a chance. But there was never a sense of occasion in Enqvist's quiet game, never a spark that showed he was ready to take his first major title.
"He played too solid for me today," Enqvist said.
"I knew if I would hit the ball back every time, his game is shaky," Kafelnikov said. "I tried to play longer points. And Thomas' serve let him down in the second set. ... I broke Thomas mentally."
Enqvist won only 33 percent of the points on his first serve in the second set, after winning 89 percent in the first set.
Kafelnikov criticized the 24-year-old Enqvist for playing so poorly, saying "it's stupid" to get to a major final and not play as hard as possible.
"I felt like Thomas had something in his body, that he still could try a little harder," Kafelnikov said.
"When I won my first Grand Slam, no one really noticed," Kafelnikov said. "But now I know what it takes. Now I feel I really deserve it."
Kafelnikov was especially happy to get past being called a "one-slam wonder." And making it sweeter, he said, was winning on a surface other than the French clay.
"To win a different [major] feels better," he said.
But Kafelnikov knows he owes a lot to Sampras, the two-time champion who said he was too tired to play this year.
"Whenever Pete is in the tournament, he is definitely the man to win," Kafelnikov said. "But when he's absent, it opens up the tournament for everybody, including myself."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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