The hamstring strain Greg Rusedski suffered before his defeat against the world's number one, Pete Sampras, finally forced him to pull out of the ATP world championship altogether yesterday, thus robbing him of an outside chance of reaching tomorrow's semi-finals.
Rusedski, the British number one, was due to play Spain's Carlos Moya, whom he had to beat, in his final round-robin match last night - a match he had tried to get postponed for 24 hours. The ATP, clearly at the beck and call of television, had refused. But ultimately the ruling body's expedient decision made no difference.
"We were very frustrated on Wednesday night when they told us they could not change the schedule," said Tony Pickard, Rusedski's coach. However yesterday, after a second opinion from a specialist in Hanover, it became clear Rusedski needed a week, rather than a day, to recover.
Television had demanded the Sampras-Pat Rafter match for prime time today, and nothing was going to change this, even if the initial request for a day's delay might have benefited Rusedski.
These sort of decisions happen all the time in sport, but there is no doubt there would have been an almighty row, and rightly so, if Rusedski's injury had been short term. In principle, the ATP's refusal to accept a postponement was wrong, for it was made for commercial and not sporting reasons.
So ended a disappointing week for Rusedski, the first British player to reach this championship, played amongst the world's top eight ranked players. "But it's been a great year for me. I've put myself on the map and losing here to Rafter and Sampras has given me the motivation to return and do better."
Russia's Yevgeny Kafelnikov, who squeezed into the championship at the last moment with victory in the Kremlin Cup, became the first player to reach the semi-finals when he crushed the world number two Michael Chang of the US, 6-3, 6-0 yesterday.
Kafelnikov, the French Open champion last year, and ranked number three at the end of 1996, injured his hand before the Australian Open last January and has only recently returned to something like his best form.
Chang, whose one Grand Slam title came at Roland Garros in 1989, is really nobody's idea of the world's number two and may well lose this position to Rafter later this week.
Yesterday he was totally unable to cope with the power of Kafelnikov's ground shots which clipped the lines with unerring accuracy. In the second set the Russian was simply devastating and must have wished he could play his semi-final there and then.
The winner of today's ChangJonas Bjorkman match will join Kafelnikov in the semi-finals, the Swede having beaten Spain's Sergi Bruguera 6-3, 6-1 yesterday.
Bruguera, like Rusedski, was forced to pull out after this defeat, having suffered a recurrence of a long standing rib injury. But he had no chance of reaching the last four.
Guardian Service
