Australian Open: Hingis eclipses Venus

Martina Hingis totally destroyed Venus Williams to meet surprise package Jennifer Capriati in her fifth successive Australian Open final in Melbourne.

Hingis won a one-sided affair 6-1 6-1, needing only 53 minutes of superb tennis, to end the unbeaten Grand Slam run of Williams stretching back 19 matches to the start of Wimbledon last June.

And the bonus for the 20-year-old Swiss miss, proving herself unquestionably the world's current number one, is that in the final she does not have to face Lindsay Davenport, the player who beat her last year.

Davenport's defence of the title ended when she suffered a surprising, but emphatic loss to fellow American Capriati, whose 6-3 6-4 victory sent the ecstatic 24-year-old into her first Grand Slam final.

While Capriati's story - a recovery from a drugs problem after she had taken the game by storm in her early teens - is a heart-warming one, it was the performance of Hingis which was the stunner.

She has never before beaten both Williams sisters in the same tournament, but after squeezing through against Serena 8-6 in the third set of a spectacular quarter-final yesterday she was up for the challenge.

And Williams was probably there for the taking.

The Wimbledon and US Open champion was the less prepared of the two for the championship after taking a two-month break at the end of last year - and was less fresh being taken to 8-6 in the third set on Wednesday by Amanda Coetzer and then playing a three-set doubles match as well.

Capriati, meanwhile, came out revved up for her match with Davenport, who like Williams has not looked in top form throughout the championship.

A break in the second game was just the boost she needed to convince herself she could reverse her semi-final defeat last year and the more the contest went on the more dejected Davenport became.