Garrison Jackson’s Sentimental Run Comes to an End : U.S. Open: Veteran from Houston falls to Conchita Martinez. Seles, Agassi among the winners.

Sentiment has little place among athletes who must, almost by definition, render another person unhappy so that they might advance. The image comes to mind of the big fish swimming silently behind the innocent little fish, the big guy’s mouth wide open.

Monday’s U.S. Open was awash with such singular calculation. In fourth-round matches, Conchita Martinez ended the sentimental run of 31-year-old Zina Garrison Jackson, Monica Seles again crushed the 20-year-old she ran over three weeks ago and Andre Agassi barely blinked before demolishing his Davis Cup teammate.

The early evening match between the fourth-ranked Martinez and the unseeded Garrison Jackson was played in a packed Grandstand Court, where Martinez put her 57-6 season record on the line. Garrison Jackson fought with the rejuvenated vigor that caused her to revoke her retirement plans, but Martinez’ overwhelming hardcourt game was too much.

Still, even losing, 7-6, 7-5, could not dull the thrill the veteran from Houston has gained by playing her best tennis in years on one of the sport’s splashiest stages.

“It’s been unbelievable,” Garrison Jackson said. “It’s been better than a dream, it’s better than anything you can actually imagine. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to realize that people enjoy my tennis, but I finally have.”

The top-seeded Agassi defeated Jared Palmer, 7-5, 6-3, 6-2, then said he felt “focused,” which often translates to: “Who did I just beat?”

After his excellent start in the first set, Palmer was at a loss to assess what happened to allow Agassi to run away with the final two sets.

“I don’t know,” Palmer said. “He puts a lot of pressure on you. I didn’t play the big points well. That’s why he’s the No. 1 player--he plays the big points well. I had some chances. He just ran away with it. He started dictating and had me on my heels a lot. I was having a hard time doing anything constructive. I just wasn’t able to stop the bleeding.”

Seles’ punishment of opponents is not measured in blood, but in minutes. Monday’s match with Anke Huber was the first time since her return to the tour last month that Seles has been extended beyond an hour. The new slow poke record for a Seles match is 71 minutes. She beat the young German, 6-1, 6-4.

Huber was asked if Seles was gaining pity points from opponents who had felt awful about the horrific stabbing that kept Seles from the sport for 28 months.

Huber laughed that anyone would be foolish enough to think any Seles opponent would ever give the co-No. 1 player a free point.

“[With Monica] everything is back in business, I guess,” Huber said. “It’s the same as it was before.”

At 21, Seles is finding tennis to be less a challenge than a facile exercise. Already invincible on the tennis court, at least for the moment, Seles is trying on her mentor/guru hat.

Before her fourth-round match against Huber, Seles was in the locker room, which the women pros must now share with the children who are playing in the junior tournament.

A young Hungarian player, Edit Pakay, was crying because she had lost a match. Seles comforted the girl and told her she should forget the match, that tennis wasn’t worth crying about.

“You shouldn’t really cry over losing a tennis match,” Seles said. “Tennis is a sport. You start playing tennis because it is fun, not to be crying or to be sad. Tennis is something I love to do, but it is not going to affect my life or my personality if I had a good day at the office or a bad day at the office. That is kind of my theory on it.

“It’s just so hard to go into the locker room and see somebody that upset and crying. She was crying because she lost a tennis match. If you lose a mom or a dad or a dear friend, it is different. Tennis is a sport, it should never go beyond that. For me, after Hamburg [where she was stabbed], tennis became a lot more. Now, hopefully, it will never become more than that ever in my lifetime or to anybody in any sport.”

Easy for her to say. The game may not be life or death, but when you get beaten by top players, you’re as good as gone.