Tennis: Rusedski misses chances

Greg Rusedski threw away two glorious chances to reach the semi-finals of the Stockholm Open last night, losing 6-7, 6-3, 7-6 to Thomas Johansson of Sweden after two hours and 10 minutes of a service-dominated match.

Rusedski led 5-2 in the final set and served for the match at 5-3. But Johansson, throwing caution to the wind, broke the British No 2 to love after Rusedski had opened with a double fault, his first of the match.

Then in the final set tie-break, Rusedski came back from 0-3 down to 4-3 with two services to follow. But he lost both services, saved a match point at 5-6 only to serve his second double fault of the contest to give Johansson another match point at 7-6, which the Swede took.

Despite his defeat, Rusedski seems certain to move into the top 50 when the next world ranking list is issued by the ATP on Monday. Not since December 1978, when Buster Mottram was ranked No 28 and John Lloyd No 37, have two Britons been in the top 50 at the same time.

Goran Ivanisevic was on court for 36 minutes on Thursday in his win over Switzerland's Jakob Hlasek and yesterday the Croat took just 56 minutes to defeat Petr Korda of the Czech Republic 7-5, 6-0 and advance to the semi-finals of the Kremlin Cup.

Yevgeny Kafelnikov, the home-town favourite and the top seed, defeated Byron Black of Zimbabwe 7-6, 6-2.