Tennis : Leconte Plays to Crowd, Tulasne Plays to Win

The unpredictable Henri Leconte was starting to get rather predictable to Thierry Tulasne at the Pilot Pen tennis tournament Thursday.

As Tulasne looked across the net in their third-round match, he saw an opponent who was playing to the crowd. Worse yet, it was working.

This seemed to bother Tulasne more than Leconte’s actions. After all, when one thinks of French tennis, the names Yannick Noah and Henri Leconte immediately come to mind.

But Thierry Tulasne?

This does not especially please Tulasne, who has lost to Leconte just once on the pro tour, but he usually understands.

Thursday, though, it was more difficult. Tulasne, seeded 12th, talked about his feelings after he upset the fifth-seeded Leconte, 7-6, 4-6, 6-3.

“I could not understand why the crowd was for him because he was like. . . . I think it was very bad what he did,” Leconte said. “I didn’t like it. He make me see he had bad back, but he was running very well.”

The back injury occurred in the second set at 2-3 with Leconte serving. During the game, Leconte hit an overhead from an awkward position, fell down and remained prone for a couple of minutes.

Then, on the next changeover, Leconte called for the tour trainer and took an injury timeout.

Tulasne did not think it was done for the sake of throwing him off his game, but said: “Maybe he needed an excuse . . . “

Afterward, Leconte received treatment and said the same injury occurred last November when he was preparing for a tournament.

“I think I should have probably stopped playing,” he said. “Because I couldn’t keep going. I couldn’t hit a backhand anywhere. It was bad for me. So I played and I lost anyway.”

All this was merely a preliminary for another all-French matchup. In today’s quarterfinals, Tulasne meets Noah in the first match on the Stadium Court. Noah, the third seed, defeated countryman Tarik Benhabiles in another third-round match.

As soon as his match ended, Noah wandered over to watch Leconte and Tulasne. With the relative closeness in ranking, the French players do not shrug off matches against one another.

Because Noah is fourth in the world and Leconte is sixth, the 18th-ranked Tulasne said he does not feel as much pressure when he plays them.

“I think it might be very difficult for him (Leconte) to play against French guys now because he has much more pressure than before,” Tulasne said. “He was thinking about that and I had no pressure at all.

“It’s very difficult to set my game against him. He has topspin, then he hits a drop shot and then a chip backhand, and then he hits net . . . and then he hits double fault. So you get cold. When you come into the court against him, you don’t know what to expect.”

With Noah, things are different. Tulasne lost to him in a three-set semifinal match in this tournament last year. Despite Noah’s higher ranking, Tulasne basically knows what to expect.

“I think we are going to play a very nice match because we are very good friends,” said Tulasne, who was planning to have dinner with Noah Thursday night. “And I like to play against Yannick. “I am better friends with Yannick than Henri. . . . I mean, it’s much nicer to play against Yannick. He’s very fair and it’s just tennis.

As for Leconte?

When asked who would win today, Noah or Tulasne, the unpredictable Frenchman had a predictable response.

“Noah, no question,” he said.

Tournament Notes

The subject was Yannick Noah’s hair and a reporter wanted to know why he had changed the style. For now, Noah is back to wearing dreadlocks. “I felt with my hair short I didn’t have as much strength,” Noah said, joking. “So, now it seems as my hair is growing longer, I’m becoming better. So I don’t think I’ll ever cut it again.” . . . The paid attendance at Grand Champions Wednesday was 5,118. . . . In other featured matches, Stefan Edberg defeated former USC player Todd Witsken, 7-5, 6-4; Boris Becker beat Scott Davis, 6-1, 6-2; and Mats Wilander defeated Milan Srejber, 3-6, 6-0, 6-4. Miloslav Mecir’s third-round match ended early when Kent Carlsson suffered an injury to his right knee in the second set and had to withdraw.