Tennis: Rusedski reaches last eight

Greg Rusedski continued his recent revival by beating the Australian Sandon Stolle 6-4, 6-3 to reach the quarter-finals of the Stockholm Open yesterday.

This victory by the Canadian-born British No 2 is almost certain to take him back into the top 50 when the next world ranking list is issued by the ATP on Monday.

Rusedski, who last month was a semi-finalist in Singapore and then won the Peking tournament, has now reached the quarter-finals of nine events on the Tour this year.

He reached the last eight of Adelaide, San Jose, Seoul and Bournemouth and was a semi-finalist at Sydney and Nottingham as well as his more recent exploits in Singapore and Peking.

Sweden's Magnus Gustafsson injured a stomach muscle in practice yesterday and was forced to default his first-round match against Belgium's Filip Dewulf. He is now very doubtful for his country's Davis Cup final against France later this month in Malmo.

"The doctor said it will probably take three weeks to heal the injury and the Davis Cup final is only three weeks away. So it looks like I can't play," Gustafsson said.

Gustafsson, the No 8 seed at the Stockholm event, had been expected to battle with Stefan Edberg for the second singles place behind Thomas Enqvist in the Swedish team.

Edberg has now retired from the ATP Tour after losing 7-6, 6-3 to his compatriot Nicklas Kulti in his opening match in Stockholm. Enqvist opened his defence of the title with a 6-3, 6-1 win over the Australian qualifier Richard Fromberg.

Byron Black, who beat Britain's Tim Henman in the first round, continued his run at the Kremlin Cup in Moscow yesterday when he defeated the 1992 Olympic champion, Marc Rosset, 7- 6, 5-7, 6-2 to reach the quarter-finals.

The Zimbabwean now faces the top-seeded French Open champion, Yevgeny Kafelnikov.