BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS: DAY 3 : A LOFTY SERVE COULD HELP SAMPRAS

Tennis star Pete Sampras flew to Barcelona on Monday from Kitzbuhel, Austria, where he had won a tournament.

Nothing special about that, right?

Sampras has won a lot of tournaments and will win a lot more.

But this was different because it was on clay, which serve-and-volley players such as Sampras like about as well as the Internal Revenue Service and trips to the dentist.

Is the victory an omen for Sampras in the Olympic tournament, which will be played on slow red clay that was described Monday by fellow American player Michael Chang as similar to “Nestle’s Quik?”

Not really an omen, said a realistic Sampras, seeded third behind Jim Courier and Stefan Edberg:

“They play in Kitzbuhel at about 2,300 feet, which makes my serve pretty fast at that altitude.”

Had Sampras ever played at real altitude, such as Mammoth Lakes or Lake Tahoe, in the 7,000-foot range?

“I played once at Tahoe,” he said. “And I could hardly keep my serve in.”

This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant, all Times-Mirror newspapers.