Chang Beaten at His Own Game : Tennis: Muster becoming just as unforgiving in 6-1, 5-7, 7-6 victory.

There must be some well-documented psychological reference for what happened to Michael Chang at the Newsweek Champions Cup Friday. There is something creepily familiar and deeply unnerving about facing an opponent who is so much like yourself.

Chang, seeded fourth, might as well have been hitting forehand shot into a mirror when he played Austria’s Thomas Muster, whose determined style resemble Chang’s trademark persistence. The two swapped ferocious groundstrokes and maximum court coverage like two tennis terriers.

In the end, Muster, seeded 14th, did the unthinkable and outhustled Chang, staving off three match points against him in the third set and winning, 6-1, 5-7, 7-6 (7-3), in a third-round match played under gloomy skies at the Hyatt Grand Champions Resort.

Two such supremely fit tennis players are seldom found on the same court. Muster’s grunting after every shot is not an indication of fatigue but effort. Chang makes no sound but launches himself into the air behind every stroke and, like Muster, does it all again when the ball come back across the net.

“I think against Thomas that you are going to be hitting a lot of balls,” Chang said. “(You know) that you are going to have to grind out a lot of points with him. Thomas has always been a tough competitor out there. He is able to grind out a lot of the matches, no matter where he is. He is fighting until the last point.”

Chang denied having just described himself, but the similarity is undeniable. Although Chang has refashioned himself as a born-again serve-and-volley player, the foundation of his game remains his steadfast refusal to give up on a single point.

The third-set tiebreaker had a palpable intensity. Chang won the first point on his serve and gained a mini-break when Muster--stunned that Chang had delivered a weak backhand directly to his racket--surveyed an open court then dumped a volley into the net.

That was Chang’s last point for a while. Muster won five consecutive points, and, in a bit of foreshadowing, hopped the net during an end change. Emblematic of his errors during the match, Chang netted a forehand on match point.

In other third-round matches, 11th-seeded Stefan Edberg defeated fifth-seeded clay specialist Alberto Berasategui, 6-1, 6-2, and third-seeded Boris Becker advanced after Marcelo Rios retired with a hip injury, 3-6, 2-3.

Todd Martin and David Wheaton played a close match that lasted 2 hours 19 minutes before Martin prevailed, 7-6 (7-5), 4-6, 7-5. Wheaton’s undoing was serving second in the last set. Both players held serve with ease, but Wheaton served two soft second serves in the last game that Martin climbed all over. He won the match on a sharply hit cross-court backhand.

Top-seeded Pete Sampras was pressed by the young Australian Patrick Rafter, but won, 6-4, 6-7 (10-8), 6-1.

In a night match that started two hours late, took 2 hours 20 minutes to play, included the second-fastest serve on the tour so far this year with Michael Stich’s 133 m.p.h boomer in the second set and ended at 10:33 p.m., 12th-seeded Magnus Larsson of Sweden outlasted sixth-seeded Stich of Germany, 5-7, 7-6 (8-6), 7-6 (7-5).