TENNIS ROUNDUP : Forget Shows That He’s Ready for Big Time

Guy Forget, making the most of his power serve and newly found self-confidence, beat U.S. Open champion Pete Sampras, 2-6, 7-6 (7-4), 6-4, on Sunday to win the ATP Championship at Mason, Ohio.

The $170,200 winner’s check was the biggest ever for Forget, 26, who has played on the French Davis Cup and Olympic teams but until this year never cracked the top 10 rankings.

“The hard thing is just to go into a tournament thinking, ‘I’m going to go through hell this week, it’s going to be 100 degrees and I’m going to have to fight five guys . . . ,’ ” Forget said.

“In the past, I was not ready to go through that fighting every day, and my level of tennis would drop dramatically.

“Now I am more relaxed and more confident and I can keep up my level of play longer than I used to.”

Sampras broke serve twice in first set, but Forget refused to buckle.

Forget took the tiebreaker with a mini-break on the ninth point, and then won his next two serves with a smash at the net and a passing shot.

The only other time he broke Sampras was in the 10th game of the third set, when Forget returned a triple match point for a winner.

He threw the baseball cap he had worn throughout the match into the stands in celebration.

Forget is seventh in the ATP computer rankings, the high point of his 10-year career. He’s just getting used to feeling that he can compete with Grand Slam winners.

“These guys, in the past, have been better than me,” Forget said. “Now I’m improving and I’m getting closer to them.

“If I play my best game and relax, maybe I beat them. But if I had to play the U.S. Open right now, I don’t think I would be ready.”

Jennifer Capriati won her second consecutive tournament and improved her world ranking to No. 7 by trouncing Bulgarian Katerina Maleeva, 6-2, 6-3, in the final of the Player’s Challenge at Toronto.

The win followed last Sunday’s three-set breakthrough against Monica Seles in the final at La Costa.

Capriati’s $100,000 first prize was the biggest payday of her 17-month career, surpassing the $86,000 from her Wimbledon semifinal appearance.

The victory lifted Capriati, 15, above Jana Novotna in the world standings, five places above her ranking before Wimbledon and three above where she was just two weeks ago.

“I don’t really have anyone in particular who I want to beat really badly,” Capriati said. “I just want to beat them all.

“I’d like to be No. 1 sometime. I don’t care when, just sometime. I’ve looked at the rankings and five, six and seven are really close at the moment, so it won’t take much to change in those places.”

Karel Novacek of Czechoslovakia defeated Magnus Gustafsson of Sweden, 7-6 (7-5), 6-2, to win the Czechoslovak Open at Prague. Novacek also won last week at Kitzbuehel, Austria, and had earlier victories at Hamburg, Germany, and Auckland, New Zealand.

Second-seeded Gigi Fernandez of Puerto Rico, the world’s top-ranked doubles player, won the second singles title of her career with a 6-0, 6-2 victory over top-seeded Julie Halard of France at the Virginia Slims of Albuquerque.

Fernandez fired a forehand down the line to end the 46-minute match and take home the $27,000 top prize. “Today I played probably one of the top five matches of my career,” Fernandez said.