TENNIS / WIMBLEDON : Sampras Puts His Shoulder Into Victory

What’s wrong with Pete Sampras’ shoulder anyway? Six days ago, he couldn’t lift his arm to brush his teeth, and Tuesday it felt so good that he used 15 aces to airbrush Neil Borwick out of Wimbledon.

Sampras’ shoulder suddenly became the most important appendage at the All England Club since the days when John McEnroe signaled who was No. 1.

Sampras, who only a couple of days ago wasn’t sure if he would be able to play this week, didn’t look like someone with inflamed tendons in his right shoulder. He defeated Borwick, 6-7 (12-10), 6-3, 7-6 (7-3), 6-3, and moved into a second-round match against Jamie Morgan, a 21-year-old Australian who loves spy novels.

Sampras’ shoulder ran more along the line of a mystery. He said he felt “a twinge” at practice nine days before, and he immediately recognized it as something unusual.

“I knew there was something definitely wrong,” Sampras said.

There was. After two examinations and a magnetic resonance imaging test, Sampras learned that tendons in his right shoulder were inflamed.

Sampras considered withdrawing from Wimbledon, but asked to delay his first-round match until Tuesday and decided to try to play.

The result?

“It felt fine,” Sampras said.

“I wasn’t exactly going for an ace on every serve, (but) I felt pretty lose, pretty good. Things are looking good.”

The same can be said for Boris Becker and Goran Ivanisevic, although they took different routes to the second round.

Becker, a three-time Wimbledon champion, defeated 22-year-old countryman Marc Goellner, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4. Goellner said he felt like he was playing Becker in his living room.

Ivanisevic came in from the back door to defeat 22-year-old Oregonian Jonathan Stark, 6-4, 5-7, 5-7, 7-6 (7-5), 6-4.

Actually, it was an unusual match, even by Ivanisevic’s skewed standards. He won the tiebreaker by hitting the ball off his frame; trailed Stark in the fifth set, 4-4, 0-40; saved a fourth break point and still came back, all the while ignoring a code-violation warning for an audible obscenity.

“I told (the linesman) something, to say hello to his mother and father,” Ivanisevic said.

The match might have taken its toll on Ivanisevic’s coach, Bob Brett. “I feel 65 years old,” Brett said.

Michael Chang joined the big servers in the second round by winning his darkness-delayed match against Paul Haarhuis in 3 hours 20 minutes, 6-2, 6-2, 4-6, 6-7 (7-5), 6-4.

This was a new, improved Chang, he said, after a conversation with his brother, Carl.

“I asked him who would win if I played myself--a serve-and-volley me or a baseline me,” Chang said. “Carl said the serve-and-volley me.”

So for the rest of Wimbledon, however long he might last, the serve-and-volley Chang will be in evidence on the grass courts.

Martina Navratilova won her 109th singles match at Wimbledon, a 6-2, 6-1 rout of Michelle Jaggard-Lai.

“I am just thankful that I’m still around,” said Navratilova, a nine-time Wimbledon singles champion.

She wrapped it up in 52 minutes, but top-seeded Steffi Graf needed only 39 minutes to pitch a 6-0, 6-0 shutout at Kirrily Sharpe.

While Sampras’ victory was not nearly as impressive, he clearly felt relief that there was no pain in his shoulder when he served.

“I came out and was a bit apprehensive, a bit unsure, but it was a good match to get under my belt,” Sampras said. “I think my tennis will hopefully get better as the tournament goes on.

“I just felt I wasn’t prepared, like walking into an exam without studying, (but) under the circumstances, I played pretty well.”