Pierce Mowed Down by Tauziat : Wimbledon: Fifth-seeded player eliminated in second round. Henman loses to Sampras, then is disqualified in doubles.

Maybe Mary Pierce’s instincts are right. Perhaps she and grass courts really don’t get along. Fresh out of the excuses that she has invoked twice to withdraw from Wimbledon, Pierce, ranked fourth and seeded fifth, finally entered the only Grand Slam event she had never played.

She lasted two rounds and two days.

The Australian Open champion became the highest seeded player to lose here, as she was upset Wednesday by fellow Frenchwoman, Nathalie Tauziat, 6-4, 3-6, 6-1.

Making a more ignominious departure was Tim Henman of England, who became the first person to be defaulted from Wimbledon and only the third player in the Open Era to be defaulted from a Grand Slam event.

Henman, 20, was teamed with Jeremy Bates in doubles against Jeff Tarango and Henrik Holm. Henman and Bates led two sets to one and were serving three points into the fourth-set tiebreaker when Tarango hit a return for a winner.

Henman grabbed the ball and struck it hard toward the net, hitting a ball girl, who was running across the court, in the head. She was not seriously hurt.

“It’s a complete accident, but I’m responsible for my actions,” Henman said later.

Henman and Bates were disqualified. Earlier in the day, Henman lost in straight sets to Pete Sampras in singles.

Besides Pierce, one seeded player lost Wednesday. Greg Rusedski--a new English citizen by way of Canada--defeated 16th-seeded Guy Forget of France, 1-6, 7-6 (7-5), 7-6 (7-4), 7-5.

Wimbledon does not take well to being snubbed. Wary of grass--she played on the surface for the first time two years ago--Pierce has made her name playing on hard courts.

Before this year, Pierce always found a reason to skip Wimbledon. Legitimate or not, her excuses wore thin on the tennis establishment.

In 1993, Pierce was entered here but contracted a virus on the eve of the tournament. Last year, she withdrew just before the tournament for “reasons beyond [her] control.” It was code talk for fear that her abusive father would show up at the tournament.

Many pointed out that Jim Pierce was banned from any WTA event and would not be allowed on the grounds at Wimbledon, but Pierce stayed away.

When she did play her first match Tuesday, her debut was met with much interest. Pierce usually draws attention, but the curiosity greeting her at Wimbledon had been mounting for years.

After her first match, a victory over Sandra Dopfer, she declared grass a curious surface.

“I’m not comfortable with my footing,” she said. “I don’t know if I should slide, like clay, or pick up my feet, like on hard courts. I look down, and it’s grass. I feel like I should be playing cricket.”

Her comfort level did not rise appreciably overnight. The match against Tauziat would not have portended well for Pierce even had she been prepared to play well. Tauziat is an excellent grass-court player who won the warm-up tournament at Eastbourne last week.

In addition to that, there was the hidden agenda that gave Tauziat incentive. Pierce is the player most other players want to beat. Factoring in jealousy for her ranking and the attention she receives, Pierce is not well liked because of her often-contemptuous on-court demeanor and gamesmanship.

Among French players, there are other reasons. Pierce was born in Canada, was raised and lives in Florida and claims French citizenship through her mother. It was Tauziat who was displaced from her seven-year claim as the No. 1 French woman when Pierce became a French citizen.

“It’s important for me to beat Mary Pierce,” Tauziat said. “I had an opportunity to beat Mary and I took it. She’s a star everywhere in the world now. If you beat her, it gives you a lot of confidence.”

Tauziat tried to duck questions about a backlash against Pierce among the French players but relented.

“I don’t like these questions,” she said. “She is French now. When she arrived, we were against her. It was tough for her to arrive in France, when you are not really French. Maybe we are not kind to her, in the beginning.

“But now she plays for us, she is nice with us, she was nice with me after the match. She has changed, I think. She starts to be much better. Her mentality during the match was good. That’s not always true. Today it was good.”

Pierce admitted to being nervous for her first match on Centre Court. Her first serve was unreliable and despite her victory in the second set, her unsure footing and Tauziat’s experience were too much.

Asked what went wrong, Pierce replied: “She just played a really good match and I didn’t move as well as I could have and I didn’t make enough first serves because she attacked my second serves. But other than that, nothing really.”

Wimbledon Notes

John McEnroe was the first player to be disqualified from a Grand Slam event. He was thrown out of the 1990 Australian Open in the fourth round for repeated verbal abuse of an official. Earlier this month, Carsten Arriens, a qualifier from Germany, was disqualified from the French Open after he threw his racket and it slid and hit a linesman in the ankle.