TENNIS: Kim Clijsters, the girlfriend of Lleyton Hewitt, put aside the disappointment of his shock fourth-round loss to reach the quarter-finals with a commanding 6-3, 6-1 victory over Amanda Coetzer.
Clijsters entered the Rod Laver Arena within an hour of Hewitt's defeat on the same court, but if any bad vibes still existed the 19-year-old fourth seed quickly dispelled them.
"I tried not to watch Lleyton's match too much because it's always a little bit tough when you are playing later," Clijsters said. "I was actually watching the Oprah Winfrey show in the afternoon and that took my mind off everything a little bit.
"I know him so well and he never likes to lose, but there's a lot worse things in life than losing a tennis match. If you see all the bush fires and everything that's happening in Australia now, losing a tennis match is nothing compared to that."
Clijsters has dropped only 10 games in her four matches and is on course to meet Serena Williams in the semi-finals, having beaten both the Williams sisters at the end-of-season championships in Los Angeles last year.
"The way I finished then has helped my confidence and really I didn't want the year to end. But I'm definitely feeling very fit, very motivated and fresh. I'm really hungry to play a lot of tennis," said Clijsters, who won the pre-Australian Open tournament in Sydney.
Her quarter-final opponent is the Anastasia Myskina (21), one of a clutch of young Russians attempting to make the grand slam breakthrough. She defeated Chanda Rubin of the US 4-6, 6-4, 6-1.
When Serena Williams found herself a break and 2-1 down in the opening set of her fourth-round match against the powerful Greek Eleni Daniilidou it appeared an upset might be about to unfold. But just at the moment when she needed to press home her advantage, Daniilidou totally lost her service action and in something like the yips doubled faulted four times in the same game.
Williams duly won with ease 6-4, 6-1 and now meets another American, Meghann Shaughnessy, who defeated Russia's Elena Bovina 5-7, 6-2, 6-4.
Serena, who last year announced that as part of her continued education she was learning one new word a day, admitted that she had "kind of fell off, but I'm trying to start again".
Clijsters will be hoping to introduce her to a four-letter word that the American has always done her level best never to utter in public. The word is "lose".
