Chang Fails to Cut the Muster in Final : French Open: Clay-court specialist from Austria wins first Grand Slam title with 7-5, 6-2, 6-4 victory.

When his semifinal opponent described being on the court against Thomas Muster as feeling like a moth playing against an elephant, it was more than hyperbole. It was an accurate description of the manner in which the Austrian clay-court specialist trampled French Open opponents.

Michael Chang was squashed in the men’s final Sunday afternoon as fifth-seeded Muster continued to be unstoppable on clay. His 7-5, 6-2, 6-4 victory runs his winning streak on clay to 35 matches.

A match considered a potentially interesting contrast in styles developed into a mismatch at center court at Roland Garros.

Chang thinks his way through points. Muster keeps pounding the ball until the point is beaten into submission. Lacking the physical stature of many professional athletes, Chang is an astute strategist. Possessing a body many professional athletes would envy, Muster is a huffing machine who hardly pauses to reflect on such niceties as tactics.

No strategy by Chang was successful in blunting Muster’s overpowering baseline pounding. Chang made an uncharacteristic 51 unforced errors in dealing with Muster’s aggressive game.

Given the velocity and pace of his game, Muster was remarkably accurate, with 35 unforced errors.

Chang, sixth-seeded, had only one small opening in the two-hour match. He broke Muster in the third game and had four break points while leading, 4-1. Muster fought back in that game and broke Chang twice to win the set.

With the break points against him, Muster said he had already imagined he would lose the set.

“It didn’t look good,” he said. “I was thinking about the second set already. But I said, ‘Try to make a change now and see how it works to start off the second set.’ It was just one break. I thought I could break Michael because he doesn’t serve too hard. He started missing because I put more pressure on him. I got a good roll and made 7-5 out of it.”

Chang ended Muster’s five-game run when he held serve to open the second set. But he repeatedly netted shots and faced, on his next service game, two break points. After losing that game to give Muster a 2-1 lead, Chang began to talk to himself.

He also failed to hold his serve in the decisive fifth game. Facing break point, he sent a tight shot long, causing him to fall behind, 1-4. Muster served out the set.

Both players have reputations as fighters. As Muster continued to surge with each stroke, Chang appeared to have run out of strategies in the face of such an onslaught. He did manage to save three break points in the fifth game of the third set, but he was broken in the seventh game.

Chang found a sliver of hope in the next game when, for the first time since the first set, he won a break point. Chang pulled even, 4-4, but he lost his serve in the next game.

Muster put together one of his best games to serve for the match. After a long rally, Chang sent a backhand long and an overwhelmed Muster collapsed on his back, having won his first Grand Slam tournament title and his first French Open title in 10 tries.

Chang, 23, won here in 1989 as a 17-year-old and six years later has much the same methodical style that earned him his first, and only, Grand Slam tournament title. He has worked at getting stronger and has begun to use a longer racket to deal with just the kind of opponent he faced Sunday.

As players on the men’s tour get stronger, Chang is frequently asked if the game is leaving him behind.

“I think in many instances, if we went by physical strength, I’d be losing just about every match out there,” Chang said. “Tennis is something you can’t just win by physical strength. You do need a certain amount of strategy out there. You need to do certain things well. Everybody knows that if you are big and strong it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can become a great tennis player. When it comes down to it, tennis is very much a thinking man’s game.”

In that sense, Muster is Chang’s opposite. He is instinctive and he depends on his body to save him. Muster’s strength developed after a drunk driver nearly ended his career in 1989. Two hours after a five-set victory over Yannick Noah at the Lipton Championships, Muster was reaching into the trunk of his parked car when it was hit head on. Muster was pinned under the car and his left knee was shredded.

His long, improbable comeback has turned him into the Jack LaLanne of the tour. At age 27, Muster is muscular and is among the most fit of players. Surely his run here was aided by the losses of Jim Courier and Andre Agassi in his half of the draw, but Muster was the best clay-court player here.

His ranking will rise to No. 3 today and, after years of dreaming of it, Muster is finally getting the title he believed he would win years ago.

“This won’t change my life,” Muster said in his low rumble of a voice. “I’m older and more experienced. If you win at 17, everyone says, ‘It’s the wonder kid.’ And [now] nobody is going to say that. The wonder kid is old and has no hair. But I can live with that problem.”