VINCE SPADEA was once known as the man who had tumbled so far so fast that only the sight of Greg Rusedski on the opposite side of the net at Wimbledon was able to revive him. In early 2000, the state in which Spadea found himself was such that if he had tried to buy a win, the cheque would have bounced.

When the draw for the All England Championships was made that year, the sniggerers presumed Spadea’s run of misfortune — he had lost 17 first-round matches — was about to end. What better way to rediscover the winning habit than to beat a British player (semi-detached or otherwise) on one of the most noted courts in the world.

But there was a genuine disbelief when Spadea obliged, recovering from losing the fourth set on a 12-10 tie-break to win the match 9-7 in the fifth. “Results like that don’t ever come until you’re not prepared for them,” a bewildered Spadea said that night. “I felt, ‘oh my gosh, what is happening to me’.”

Which might be a similar feeling to the one that he experienced yesterday when he reached his first Masters Series semi-final, defeating Brian Vahaly, a fellow qualifier, 6-3, 6-2. The first of what could be a clutch of Americans in the last four of the Pacific Life Open was hardly greeted with the levels of enthusiasm that Spadea might have expected, but then he has never been one to play to a loud crescendo.

Even when the Chicago-born Spadea won the unofficial World Junior Hardcourt Championship, the Orange Bowl in 1992 (David Brewer, of Scotland, won the clay-court equivalent, the Banana Bowl, in Brazil this week), there was little fanfare. Spadea was always on the outside looking in — first-round defeats litter his grand-slam record — as the brighter, bolder lights filled the top levels of the game.

From a ranking of 20 at the end of 1999, he had slipped to the obscurity of 229 some 12 months later.

And so began Spadea’s attempt to piece together his game, utilising a group of helpers, the most notable of whom is Dr Pete Fischer, the man credited with inspiring Pete Sampras in the early stages of his career.

“He has improved my serve, my mental outlook, my strategy, everything,” Spadea said. “I had to make the decision to get my head and my tennis priorities back if I was ever going to progress in the sport again.”

At 28, Spadea feels fitter than he has for ages. He came through the qualifying here — Magnus Norman, of Sweden, the former French Open runner-up and world No 4, was one of his victims — and has rolled off four straight wins for the loss of a single set in the tournament proper. Vahaly, who had defeated Juan Carlos Ferrero, of Spain, the No 3 seed, in the second round, was taken to pieces in the quarters.

For Spadea, the task now becomes exceedingly tricky. In today’s semi-final, he will meet Lleyton Hewitt, who defeated Robby Ginepri, 6-4, 6-2 and thus secured the world No 1 ranking that he would have lost had he not reached the last four.

Hewitt saved three match points in the first round against Younes El Aynaoui, of Morocco, and lost a set to Guillermo Coria, of Argentina, in the third round, but he looked impressively in control against Ginepri, another American, whom he had beaten 6-0, 6-0 in their only previous meeting.