NCAA Women’s Tennis : Bruin Sampras Upsets No. 5 Hahn, 6-4, 6-3

Stella Sampras was preparing to hit with her coach, Paul Holbach, just as a group of reporters finished interviewing the victorious Stanford women’s tennis team on Sunday at UCLA’s L.A. Tennis Center.

Holbach had a particular message to deliver--to Sampras--and to the reporters.

“Stella Sampras is going to beat Sonia Hahn tomorrow,” he said. “You heard it here first.”

Well, tomorrow came and Sampras made sure Holbach didn’t have to swallow his words as she defeated the fifth-seeded Hahn, 6-4, 6-3, in a first-round match Monday. Sampras, a UCLA freshman from Rancho Palos Verdes, plays No. 4 for the Bruins. Hahn is Kentucky’s No. 1.

That didn’t seem to matter when Sampras rallied from a 2-0 first-set deficit and never looked back. She defeated USC’s Mary Norwood, 6-3, 6-4, in the second round but the victory over Hahn was the first big upset of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. individual tournament.

“At the beginning of the match against Sonia, I was real tight and out of it,” said Sampras, who faces Pepperdine’s Janna Kovacevich today in the round of 16. “But once I won a couple of games, it gave me more confidence.”

And, according to UCLA Coach Bill Zaima, all it took was a little confidence and lots of hard work for Sampras to come on strong. After all, the genes in her family aren’t too bad, either. Her younger brother, Pete, turned professional recently after beating Ramesh Krishnan and Eliot Teltscher this spring at Indian Wells.

“Stella has programmed herself to be the player that most people thought she’d be,” Zaima said. “At first, she said she wasn’t playing well because people expected a lot out of her. Now, at this tournament, she expects a lot out of herself. She’s only scratched the surface of what she can be.”

Besides Hahn, four other seeded players lost Monday, failing to reach the final 16.

Sixth-seeded Jennifer Santrock of SMU, a semifinalist in 1987, lost to Florida’s Nicole Arendt in the second round, 1-6, 6-4, 6-3.

Pepperdine’s Ginger Helgeson, the seventh-seeded player, squandered a 6-2, 5-2 lead in losing to USC’s Lupita Novelo in the first round, 2-6, 7-6, 6-3.

Kathy Foxworth of Houston and Stanford’s Eleni Rossides, who were both seeded alphabetically, 9-16, lost their first-round matches.