Santoro Upsets Champion at Phillips Open

Fabrice Santoro, a 17-year-old Frenchman, upset defending champion Andrei Chesnokov of the Soviet Union 6-3, 6-4 in the Phillips Open tennis tournament today.

In other second-round matches, two Swiss players advanced: Jakob Hlasek downed Claudio Pistolesi of Italy, 6-4, 6-4, and Marc Rosset eliminated Spain’s Tomas Carbonell, 7-6 (7-3), 4-6, 6 -4.

Also, Spain’s Juan Aguilera ousted Aki Rahunen of Finland, 6-2, 2-6, 6-4.

Santoro, ranked 125th in the world, advanced to the quarterfinals of the tournament that has seen seven of the eight seeded players lose in the first two rounds. Only No. 1 seed Jay Berger of the United States is left.

Santoro, the French Open junior champion last year, used a two-handed forehand and backhand to defeat Chesnokov, ranked 18th in the world and a top clay court player.

“I think I played the best match of my career and got the best results,” Santoro said. Last year, Santoro beat former Top-10 player Andres Gomez of Ecuador, ranked 27th at the time.

“In the past year I have made a lot of progrress offensively and can now end points at the net,” Santoro said.

“He is very fast and runs very well,” Chesnokov said. “I didn’t fhave enough patience but he played very well.”