WIMBLEDON : Big Names Mow Them Down

So, Pete Sampras, how would you rate your third-round match at Wimbledon?

“A pretty good performance on my part, I thought,” he said.

And, you, Andre Agassi, how is it going for you so far?

“I’ve had a few great matches,” he said.

Boris Becker, how about your third-round match?

“It turned out all right for me at the end,” he said.

And so it went Friday, when the tennis was as cut and dried as the grass they played it on.

Sampras, Agassi, Becker, Michael Stich and Richard Krajicek moved confidently into the fourth round at the All England Club on Church Road, where the underdogs didn’t have a prayer.

Sampras ripped through 108th-ranked Byron Black, 6-4, 6-1, 6-1, setting up a fourth-round encounter with 332nd-ranked Andrew Foster, a wild card from England.

Agassi had only slightly more trouble disposing of Patrick Rafter, a wild card from Australia, 6-1, 6-7 (7-5), 6-0, 6-3, and goes on to meet Krajicek, who disposed of qualifier Laurence Tieleman, 6-2, 7-5, 5-7, 6-2.

Becker remained on track to meet either Agassi or Krajicek in the quarterfinals by eclipsing Jakob Hlasek of Switzerland, 6-3, 3-6, 6-2, 6-3. Afterward, Becker wore a Chicago Bull cap to the postmatch news conference “because I admire Michael Jordan so much.”

It seemed sort of fitting, although Becker hasn’t three-peated in this tournament, even though he is a three-time winner.

Because there was little high drama among the participants on the court, they injected some life into the proceedings by going for laughs.

Continuing the body-hair theme established earlier in the week, Agassi was asked what the reaction has been to his low-density chest hair.

“A few more whistles and a few more screeches, (which) has to do with me trimming my body hair,” he said.

Even Sampras got into the act, surprising everyone, since he is a straight man if there ever was one.

Asked why he walked around the court with his head down, Sampras replied: “I’m looking for money.”

Then there was Becker, who was asked if he followed any special diet.

“I’ll follow the seafood diet,” Becker said. “I eat what I see.”

Agassi won nine consecutive games after Rafter took the second set in a tiebreaker, winning one point with a volley he clanked off the frame of his racket.

From then on, it was all Andre, which is usually how things turn out at Wimbledon for the defending champion. He said his wrist felt fine, and it certainly appeared to be every time he ripped his forehand into the open court.

Said Rafter: “He’s quite intimidating to play.”

The same might be said of Krajicek, a 6-foot-5 right-handed serving machine. On grass, such a sight can be daunting, but Agassi is not going into their match with his eyes closed. He watched Goran Ivanisevic ace him 37 times in last year’s final and still won.

“A guy like Krajicek, in my opinion, is a typical guy you’re going to face when you get to this stage of the tournament,” Agassi said.

And at this same stage, it’s pretty clear that Steffi Graf is having a typical Wimbledon. She has already won it four times and moved a step closer to a fifth title when she obliterated Helen Kelesi, 6-0, 6-0.

It was a wipeout of epic proportions. Graf needed only 34 minutes, two minutes longer than the shortest match she can remember playing. That was the 1988 French Open final, when she dumped Natalia Zvereva, 6-0, 6-0.

Graf has been nearly perfect so far. She has had two 6-0, 6-0 matches and lost only three games in her other one.

“If I’m in that kind of form, I’m not really worried it will disappear,” she said.

On the other hand, it all disappeared for Brenda Schultz, who became distracted, then fell apart after Jennifer Capriati had taken an injury timeout to have blisters on her foot taken care of at the start of the third set.

Schultz turned a 1-0 lead into a 4-1 deficit and fell to Capriati, 7-5, 4-6, 6-2. Capriati said there was nothing she could do about it since, after all, she was hurt.

Schultz said her problem was all in her mind.

“You try to focus and to just go on with your match and stuff, but you start thinking,” she said. “You just cannot stop your brain to think.”

Tennis Notes

Meredith McGrath has to play top-seeded Steffi Graf in the fourth round, but Graf won’t be any tougher than what McGrath has already been through. McGrath is coming back from hip surgery. Doctors had thought she might need a hip replacement, but found a pinched nerve instead. She was sidelined for 18 months, returned in February and is 9-9 this year. McGrath, 22, from Midland, Mich., turned pro after her freshman year at Stanford.

Arantxa Sanchez Vicario has never gone beyond the quarterfinals on Wimbledon’s grass, which obviously is not her favorite surface. She once said that the only thing grass is good for is cows. But after defeating Patty Fendick, 6-3, 6-2, Sanchez Vicario is only only one victory away from reaching the quarterfinals again. She will play Helena Sukova in the fourth round. The third-seeded Sanchez Vicario is trying to come back after a disappointing loss in the semifinals of the French Open where, she said, she had flu.

The U.S. Open plans to use electronic line-calling on its main courts, but there may be some opposition forming. The ATP player council is considering a protest. Pete Sampras said he doesn’t like the idea of electronic line-calling. “I don’t know if that is going to result in boring tennis, but it will take a lot of the personality out of the game,” he said. “That’s why people come to watch tennis--the way people react with the line calls and the outbursts. I think that’s good for the game.”