TENNIS AUSTRALIAN OPEN : Silent Seles Moves to Quarterfinals

Grunts or no grunts, Monica Seles still looks invincible. Fever or no fever, Jennifer Capriati simply keeps winning.

Seles played in virtual silence today against Nathalie Tauziat, who complained about her grunting at Wimbledon last year, but won easily anyway, 6-2, 6-0, and reached the quarterfinals of the Australian Open.

Seles, one of the few healthy players in the Open, maintained her average of yielding only two games a match through the first four rounds. The defending champion and No. 1-seeded women’s player won the last eight games against 13th-seeded Tauziat, including a stretch where she won 31 of 38 points.

“When she plays like this, sometimes you can’t do anything,” Tauziat said of Seles’ knockout shots in a combination of groundstrokes. “It’s winner, winner, winner, like a boxing match, one, two, three.”

Seles next plays another Frenchwoman, unseeded Julie Halard, who upset Conchita Martinez, 6-4, 6-3, to reach a Grand Slam quarterfinal for the first time in 23 attempts.

Capriati, seeded seventh, defeated Katerina Maleeva, 6-7 (7-2), 6-3, 6-1, to reach the quarterfinals against Steffi Graf, whom Capriati defeated to win the gold medal in the Barcelona Olympics. That match was on clay, this one on hard courts where Capriati’s newly developed net attack is expected to be severely tested by Graf’s punishing forehand.

Capriati’s fever went up and down and up the first week, and her abdominal pain came and went from a mysterious virus that bothered her only when she wasn’t playing tennis. She got an extra day of rest Sunday when rain washed out play on the outer courts, and she looked strong against Maleeva, whose strained left thigh was heavily wrapped and hurt from the middle of the second set on.

The Maleevas, Katerina, Magdalena and Manuela, were the first three sisters to reach the round of 16 in a Grand Slam event--and the first three to lose in that round.

Mary Joe Fernandez, seeded fifth and a two-time Australian Open finalist, beat Manuela, 7-5, 2-6, 6-2, today.

In the men’s draw, third-seeded Pete Sampras had his blistered right foot taped late in the third set before closing out a 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 victory over MaliVai Washington to reach the quarterfinals.