Huber and Rubin End Chances for Spain’s Reign Down Under

MELBOURNE, Australia —  Knuckles bleeding from a fall on court, Conchita Martinez tumbled out of the Australian Open on Tuesday as Anke Huber reached a Grand Slam semifinal for the first time in three years.

Huber, who pushed fellow German Steffi Graf to five sets before losing in the WTA Tour Championships in November, beat the second-seeded Martinez, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1, to set up a semifinal against Amanda Coetzer.

It was a bad two days for Spanish women.

Chanda Rubin, a teenager already famous for winning marathon matches, outlasted No. 3 Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, 6-4, 2-6, 16-14, in the longest women’s match ever in the Australian Open.

Rubin, who advanced to a semifinal against Monica Seles, let two match points slip away at 4-5 in the final set and another two at 13-14--one on a controversial line call. The American had a 40-0 lead at 15-14 and won on her sixth match point with a stretched forehand cross-court volley.

The third set took 2 hours, 22 minutes of the 3:33 match, which set Open-era tournament records for games (48) and final-set games (30).

In the second round at Wimbledon last year, Rubin beat Patricia Hy-Boulais, 7-6, 6-7, 17-15, in 3:45, establishing a Wimbledon women’s record for longest final set at 2:04 and number of games in a set.

Rubin also came back from a 0-5, 0-40 third-set deficit against Jana Novotna in the third round of last year’s French Open.

In a match interrupted 45 minutes by rain and completed under the closed retractable roof, the right-handed Martinez skinned her knuckles and jammed her right hand as she fell near the net while trailing, 4-2, in the second set. She dabbed her hand on a towel, went back on court and was broken to 5-2.

Martinez didn’t ask a trainer to treat her until she was down, 3-0, in the third set, and by that time the bandages and ice didn’t help. Huber was in control, attacking at the net and beating her from the baseline, as Martinez made 14 errors to Huber’s two in the final set.

The only other major semifinal the 21-year-old Huber has played was the French Open in 1993. In her last 10 majors, she never went beyond the fourth round.

“It was an advantage for me that we played indoors,” Huber said. Martinez agreed.

“I found that when they closed the roof [at 3-1 in the second set], everything was much faster,” Martinez said. “It was difficult to play my game. The court was a little bit sticky.”

The rain and long match delayed the resumption of the men’s quarterfinal duel between defending champion Andre Agassi and two-time champion Jim Courier, which was suspended just after midnight Tuesday with Courier leading the first set on serve, 5-4.

Martina Hingis’ bid to become the youngest semifinalist in Australian Open history ended in a frustrating flurry of errors and racket-flinging.

Hingis, putting on a show of adolescent petulance when points and calls went against her, double-faulted to end a windblown match against Coetzer, 7-5, 4-6, 6-1.

At 15, Hingis is a talented but limited player, possessing solid ground strokes but no big weapons to beat more experienced and steadier rivals such as Coetzer, a 24-year-old South African.