TENNIS FRENCH OPEN : Courier Earns Way to Edberg Matchup

Can Jim Courier pull an upset out of his cap?

Besides his arm, the only thing up his sleeve Monday was the T-shirt he wore underneath his tennis shirt because of the cold weather, but the secret to Courier’s success may be, well, his cap.

“I guess it’s some kind of magic charm,” said Courier, who has had his cap on for most of every match he has had so far at the French Open, where coincidentally, he kept winning Monday and reached a quarterfinal showdown against Stefan Edberg.

Now, beating Edberg, that would be quite a trick.

“He’ll be serving big, and I’ll be ripping returns at his feet to see what he’ll come up with,” Courier said.

For the last week, Todd Martin has been Courier’s French Open practice partner every day, but Martin said that Courier must come up with a new partner now.

“He can find somebody else after what he did to me today,” said Martin, who was joking.

What Courier did to Martin on a blustery day at Roland Garros Stadium wasn’t very funny, but it was clearly effective. Courier won in a breeze, 6-2, 6-3, 6-3, and required only 1 hour 55 minutes, or about as long as one of his nightly dinners with Martin.

And if Courier has lost his practice partner, he has gained a formidable quarterfinal opponent in the top-seeded Edberg. Courier said, however, that having to play someone that good in his first appearance in a Grand Slam quarterfinal doesn’t detract from his having made it this far for the first time.

Courier had reached the fourth round in three other Grand Slam events and lost to Edberg in the fourth round of the Australian Open in January.

“It’s a nice hump to get over,” Courier said of reaching the quarterfinals.

Monday’s gray weather differed greatly from the bright sunshine the day before. With the temperature in the mid-50s and seeming colder because of a constant wind, there appeared to have been a rush to get off the courts as fast as possible.

It was sweater weather for Edberg, who swept away Andrei Cherkasov, 7-6 (7-4), 6-4, 6-3, but it didn’t happen as easily as it looked.

Cherkasov jumped to a 5-2 lead and served for the set at 5-3 and couldn’t pull it off, eventually falling in a tiebreaker.

Said Cherkasov: “You can’t lose concentration against someone like Edberg.”

Michael Stich needed only 91 minutes to say goodby to Fabrice Santoro, 6-3, 6-1, 6-2, and set up a quarterfinal meeting with Franco Davin, who labored slightly in a 7-6 (7-2), 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 victory over Arnaud Boetsch.

Santoro said he was sick after having eaten pasta and salad for dinner Sunday night, but Stich hadn’t noticed that Santoro was ailing.

“No, I didn’t know,” Stich said. “He didn’t tell me.”

Two men’s singles quarterfinals are scheduled for today with most of the attention sure to be directed at Boris Becker’s encounter with Michael Chang.

Becker, a two-time French Open semifinalist, was upset by Goran Ivanisevic in the first round last year when Becker was fit, which can’t be said for him now.

Although Becker has been mum about his physical problems, the German press has reported that trouble with his sacroiliac is affecting the circulation in his upper thighs.

Chang lost his only match with Becker, but that was on carpet in Brussels.

In the other quarterfinal, Andre Agassi faces Jakob Hlasek in a rematch of their meeting in the 1988 Masters when Hlasek won in straight sets.

“There’s something about losing to somebody twice in a row that nobody enjoys,” Agassi said. “But the last time I played him, I couldn’t have weighed more than 150 pounds. I really got pushed around.”

Agassi, who said he now weighs more than 170 pounds, discounted speculation that he has traded speed for added bulk.

“Bo Jackson is a pretty big dude and he’s a lot faster than I am,” he said.

At 6 feet 6, Martin is a lot bigger than Courier, who is five inches shorter, but as the ninth-seeded player, Courier is a much more accomplished clay-court performer than his serve-and-volley ex-practice partner.

Martin is certain to improve his ranking of No. 243, but he had a wry reaction when asked how he may play on grass courts as a result of this kind of French Open showing.

“Out of this kind of drubbing?” Martin said.

Courier said his white cap must be at least partly responsible. The good part is that he can tug on the bill like a baseball pitcher, Courier said.

“It just gives me something to do besides look at the strings of my racket,” he said.

Tennis Notes

Politics, politics, politics: The International Tennis Federation’s Olympic Committee issued a news release here that seemed to require the participation of top women’s players in Federation Cup. The ITF reaffirmed the International Olympic Committee’s requirement that athletes be in good standing with their national federations for participation in the Olympics. Such top women as Martina Navratilova, Monica Seles and Gabriela Sabatini had not announced plans to play Fed Cup, July 22-28 in Nottingham, England.

All four of the women’s singles quarterfinals matches are scheduled for today: fourth-seeded Mary Joe Fernandez against fifth-seeded Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, third-seeded Sabatini against sixth-seeded Jana Novotna, top-seeded Seles against seventh-seeded Conchita Martinez, and second-seeded Steffi Graf against 13th-seeded Nathalie Tauziat. . . . Sanchez Vicario is 20-5 on clay and has made it to the semifinals in all of her tournaments this year. Fernandez is 0-2 against her.

Novotna upset Sabatini in straight sets in the fourth round here a year ago. Sabatini, whose 39-3 record is the best on the Kraft Tour, is 5-2 against Novotna.