BY NEIL SCHMIDT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Yevgeny Kafelnikov agonizes after missing a break point Friday.
(AP photo)
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MASON -- Patrick Rafter will be there, hotter than an asteroid -- or asteroid movies, for that matter.
Yevgeny Kafelnikov will show up, too. One of him.
Will he be Jekyll? Or Hyde?
Rafter and Kafelnikov arrive at their 2 p.m. Great American Insurance ATP Championship semifinal from disparate directions. Rafter, the Australian hunk ranked third in the world, rides an eight-match winning streak. Kafelnikov, a brooding Russian ranked 10th, has advanced in spite of a puzzling funk.
"You just never know what he's going to come up with," Rafter said of Kafelnikov. "It depends on his frame of mind. You've found out in the press conferences how fragile he is at the moment.
"I hope he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed."
Against Rafter, he hasn't yet. Kafelnikov has won all three of their previous meetings without dropping a set.
After beating Daniel Vacek 6-4, 6-4 Friday, Kafelnikov didn't care who won the Rafter-Petr Korda quarterfinal; he was 7-2 with five straight victories against Korda.
"They are both my pigeons," he joked.
Kafelnikov, 24, will confess to his insecurities. In an interview Thursday, he said he has lost his motivation and has been greatly distracted by personal problems.
It's hard to soul-search your way to Sundays on this tour, and Kafelnikov hasn't. Entrenched in the top five for two years, his ranking has slowly slipped all season.
Rafter might be just what he needs.
"Once you have a confidence on an opponent, no matter how you play, you feel like you still have a chance to beat him," Kafelnikov said. "That's how I feel, even though I haven't done anything lately, haven't made any big results. I still feel like I have a good shot."
Patrick Rafter is the tour's hottest player.
(Ernest Coleman photo)
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Rafter, now the tour's hottest player, admits the head-to-head record becomes a factor.
"You think about it," he said. "I know he's got a better chance of beating me than I have of winning. If he wants to play tennis, he's one of the best players in the world.
"But at this stage, I'm playing well. I don't want to think about our record."
Better to focus on the skid marks he's leaving on the tour.
Rafter won the du Maurier Open last week in Toronto, another Mercedes Super 9 event, without dropping a set. He has lost just one set here.
Friday, he saved two set points in a second-set tiebreaker to oust fifth-ranked Korda 6-4, 7-6 (10-8). On the second one, a backhand off the frame of his racket struck the sideline for a winner.
"You can see he's playing really well at the moment," Korda said. "He was better on the important points. Everything he hits is coming to the inside of the lines."
"If you want to beat the hot player like Patrick, you have to make your chances. Maybe you're going to get one chance in the match, and you have to make that chance."
Rafter celebrates Friday's win.
(Ernest Coleman photo)
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Rafter, who began 1997 ranked No. 62, got on a tear late last summer. Beginning with his shocking U.S. Open title, Rafter streaked to the No. 2 ranking by year's end.
This time, he figures he's ahead of schedule.
"I usually don't fire this early on in my run," he said. "But once you're playing well, you've got to ride it.
"When you're playing well, everything goes your way. You create your own luck. Someone says you're lucky; how many times is someone always lucky?"
So how does one create luck?
"Hard work, mate. Harder work than anyone else."
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