His victory in the Scottish Open at Carnoustie was a class example of front running and his

His victory in the Scottish Open at Carnoustie was a class example of front running, and his two-shot win in the Portuguese Open at Aroeira yesterday was another.Some years ago a certain hot-headedness would have boiled over. On Saturday, Riley held a seven-shot lead before seeing it cut to two by the end of the day. Yesterday, he was only one in front of Martin Gates after a bogey at the eighth The response said it all. Agassi appeared lethargic at times, even though the draw had opened up before he arrived on court, Boris Becker withdrawing due to illness and Thomas Muster again finding the No 1 ranking to be a banana skin.Karbacher was disappointed not to win, saying of Agassi: “He’s not as good as he was last year. She now plays Gigi’s former doubles partner, Mary Joe.Andre Agassi, the men’s defending champion, teetered on Saturday night before winning his opening match 6-4, 1-6, 7-6, against Germany’s Bernd Karbacher. “I think it was a pretty solid match, but maybe sometimes on my return I did not step into my slices as often as I should, so that’s the only thing I would criticise,” she said.Having dispensed with one American Fernandez, Graf is faced with another.

Naturally, Graf was not entirely satisfied with her performance. His defence was never tested, but the finishing of a player who left Headingley last summer was exemplary.Another to follow that well-trod path, Paul Cook, kicked four goals and frequently troubled his old team-mates with his side-stepping runs from full-back, while yet another old Loiner, Paul Medley, will be difficult to omit from the starting line-up at Wembley when the Bulls meet St Helens on 27 April, after his energetic contribution when brought on as a substitute.Although Gary Christie and Sonny Nickle had quiet afternoons, Bradford did not have a poor player. Fernandez found herself with an opportunity to break back as Graf missed a volley when serving for the set, but the Wimbledon champion rescued the situation with a forehand pass.Graf broke in the opening game of the second set, from which point the spectators were able to relax and enjoy the variety of her shots. They duelled through 26 points, with Fernandez saving four break points before holding serve.Having survived that, the American double-faulted to present Graf with a 5-3 lead. “I had not played a match for three weeks and I felt that a little bit, but I’m not going to lose my confidence because I lost this match.”Graf and Fernandez, a Wimbledon semi-finalist in 1994, had only played each other twice before on the tour, with ll years separating the matches. The American won an encounter on grass in Sydney in 1983, Graf making amends on a rubberised concrete court at Indian Wells, California, two years ago.Few would have guessed that they had experienced so little of each other’s shots when the fourth game unfolded yesterday. She was unable to convert a match point at 5-3 and two more at 6-5, and finally secured victory at the fourth attempt in a tie-break, 7-4, after Sanchez Vicario had led 3-1.”I had my chances in the tie-break, but she hit better shots than me,” the Spaniard acknowledged.

The defending champion hit 35 winners, 12 on her backhand, and was guilty of only three unforced errors.Impressive though the statistics are, a greater impression was created by the freedom with which Graf played, interspersing her forehands with intelligent lobs and the odd volley. It was probably only coincidence that the German’s chief rival here, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, had been eliminated after a frenzied match the previous evening.Graf and Sanchez Vicario have dominated the event for the past four years, but the Spanish second seed was unable to contain Karina Habsudova, a talented Slovak, in her opening match.Habsudova, ranked No 98, won 2-6, 6-3, 7-6, but only after having a 5- 2 lead whittled away in the final set. Tennis

JOHN ROBERTS
reports from Key BiscayneSteffi Graf played as elegantly as she looked while advancing to the fourth round of the Lipton Championships here yesterday with a 6-3, 6- 2 win against Gigi Fernandez. Ice skating

The American Michelle Kwan won the women’s competition at the World Figure Skating Championships in Edmonton, Canada, after a close battle with the defending champion, Lu Chen of China.
Irina Slutskaya, of Russia, took the bronze medal with Britain’s Stephanie Main finishing back in 22nd place.Kwan and Chen each received marks of 6.0 – the highest possible and the only ones in this competition – from two of the nine judges in the long programme, which was worth two-thirds of the final total.The 15-year-old Kwan displayed remarkable grace under pressure by performing brilliantly after Chen had been awarded two 6.0s and a standing ovation from the 17,000 fans just 20 minutes earlier.”I think it’s incredible that there is a Chinese-American that won the world championship,” Kwan said.Russia’s Maria Butryskaya was fourth and France’s Surya Bonaly, who captured the silver medal for the last three years, was fifth.Slutskaya, who fell just 25 seconds into her programme when attempting a triple jump, showed great composure by coming back to land a combination triple-double jump and performed the rest of her routine without error.The 17-year-old Slutskaya, in only her second world championships after finishing seventh last year, received excellent marks, but the fall apparently destroyed her chance to win silver or gold.The long-awaited return of Japan’s Midori Ito delighted the crowd, but Ito, who had an undisclosed illness that forced her to go to hospital on Thursday, had trouble with several of her jumps and finished seventh.Ito, the 1992 Olympic silver medalist and 1989 world champion, was returning to the event after a four-year absence in which she turned professional before being reinstated for the championships.. 400m Ind Medley: S Hardcastle (Bracknell).Relay teams to be announced today.. At 29 he has passed into the antiquated rather than the old category, but he walloped the next generation by more than two seconds.MEN50m freestyle: M Foster (Cardiff) 100m freestyle: N Shackell (Millfield) 200m freestyle: P Palmer (Lincoln), A Clayton (Leeds) 400m freestyle: P Palmer (Lincoln) 1500m freestyle: G Smith (Stockport), P Palmer (Lincoln) 100m breaststroke: R Maden (Rochdale) 200m breaststroke: N Gillingham (Birmingham) 100m butterfly: J Hickman (Stockport) 200m butterfly: J Hickman (Stockport).

200m backstroke: A Ruckwood (Birmingham), M Harris (Tower Hamlets) 200m Ind Medley: No qualifier. 400m Ind Medley: No qualifier.WOMEN50m freestyle: S Rolph (Newcastle) 100m freestyle: K Pickering (Ipswich), S Rolph (Newcastle) 200m freestyle: K Pickering (Ipswich) 400m freestyle: S Hardcastle (Bracknell) 800m freestyle: S Hardcastle (Bracknell) 100m breaststroke: J King (Waltham Forest) 200m breaststroke: M Hardiman (Birmingham) 100m butterfly: C Foot (York) 200m butterfly: No qualifier 100m backstroke: H Slatter (Warrington) 200m backstroke: J Deakins (Coventry) 200m Ind Medley: S Rolph (Newcastle). 100m backstroke: N Willey (Barnet Copthall), M Harris (Tower Hamlets). Nick Gillingham, a silver and bronze medallist in the 200m breaststroke in 1988 and 1992, qualified to attempt to complete the full set. About time too” – and that seemed to please Hickman as much as the record.

“To get something from someone who’s done it, who really knows how much training’s gone into it, that was really special,” he said.Susan Rolph, 17, crowned a week of personal bests by shaving 0.8sec off Jean Hill’s 1986 record in the 200m individual medley. She is going to be busy in Atlanta, having already qualified for the 50m and 100m freestyle.The younger generation did not quite have it all their own way, as Foot would prove the following day. The 20-year-old from Stockport Metro reduced it in the heats and then the final, cutting it by a total of 1.71sec to 1:58.50 and becoming the first Briton to break two minutes.Hubble faxed a message – “Well done. Pickering, a world short- course champion in the event in 1993, shot off her block and was half a second inside the British record at 50 metres.Hardcastle’s strength is her strength, however, and as Pickering paid for her early pace she came back at her and after being nearly two seconds behind at the 150-metre mark Hardcastle finished up just half a second down.A silver and bronze medallist at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, and with much of her speed work to come, she will have been encouraged by her proximity Pickering.While Hardcastle’s swim recalled another era, events on Saturday wiped out a bit of history, two of the longest standing (and therefore most embarrassing) records in British swimming at last being erased from the books.James Hickman is not a household name but he could become one in the next few years after beating Phil Hubble’s mark for the 200m butterfly that has stood since 1981. “I was feeling really tired,” she said, “so I’m fairly pleased with the time. I’m going to have to do a lot of work before I go to Atlanta.”Nevertheless her race was among the best at the trials because Sarah Hardcastle was coming back at her at the end.