High-Flying Czech Soars Into Final Korda To Face Chile’s Rios For Australian Open Men’s Title
Four sets, three cartwheels, two scissors kicks, one soaring spread eagle.
Petr Korda did it all Thursday as he secured his place in the Australian Open final and celebrated with the springy exuberance of a kid half his age.
And what would he do if he wins this Grand Slam tournament Sunday? Fly perhaps?
“If I could get the telephone number of the Chicago Bulls, maybe I ask Mr. Jordan how to fly,” he said with a laugh. “Air Korda.”
The way he’s playing, the name fits.
Korda ascended to the final with a 6-1, 6-4, 1-6, 6-2 victory over Karol Kucera, the Slovak who sent defending champion Pete Sampras packing in the quarterfinals.
Korda will play for the title against 22-year-old Marcelo Rios of Chile, a 6-1, 6-3, 6-2 victor over Nicolas Escude of France. Escude had come back from two sets down an Open-era record three times in the tournament, but Rios’ stronger baseline game prevented another great escape.
At the ripe tennis age of 30, six years after his first and, until now, only Grand Slam final in the French Open, Korda is enjoying a renaissance in his game and his life that is well worth celebrating in imaginative ways.
“It is a special moment, and I still can’t believe it,” Korda said. “I’m still living in a dream, and that (jumping) is my way to express to the whole world how happy I am in the moment. What I went through the past few years, to be where I am right now, it’s a very nice ride.”
Here is a man who once was held back in the juniors and denied meal money by the rigid bureaucrats of the former Czechoslovakia when it was part of the Soviet bloc. A man who seemed to have peaked in 1992. A man who nearly quit tennis forever three years ago because of unbearable pain in a torn groin muscle.
“I didn’t want to live in constant pain,” he said. “I went for surgery just to be OK for my normal life. But then I got the spirit again, and since that time I am probably enjoying tennis more than I was even in ‘92 or ‘93 because I know my clock is running against me.
“Right now, I still feel it is 5 to 12. But these 5 minutes can be very long.”
Surgery healed his body, marriage and fatherhood gave him a new zest for life. A skinny, 6-foot-3, 160-pounder with a tuft of spiky blond hair atop his triangular head, Korda has been called “the human toothbrush.”
xxxx Today on TV 10 a.m.: Australian Open, tape (ESPN). 6:30 p.m.: Australian Open (ESPN)