Others Stumble, but Muster Wins at Monte Carlo

On a Wednesday in which upsets were the norm, Thomas Muster was the exception.

But on clay Muster usually is exceptional.

Muster won his 31st consecutive clay-court match and opened defense of his Monte Carlo Open championship with a 7-5, 6-4 victory over Tomas Carbonell.

Jim Courier and Michael Chang were among eight seeded players eliminated in second-round losses.

Chang, seeded third, lost a 6-7 (8-10), 6-2, 6-4 decision to Carlos Costa; and Courier, seeded eighth, was a 6-3, 6-3 loser to Javier Sanchez.

Muster has won three clay-court tournaments this year, six in a row, and has not lost a match on the surface since August.

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Spain’s top women’s players, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and Conchita Martinez, have decided not to compete in a Federation Cup first-round match against South Africa, because they wanted more than the $55,000 they were offered.

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Jennifer Capriati should have a chance to defend her 1992 Olympic gold medal, Fed Cup team captain Billie Jean King said.

Capriati, who is returning to pro tennis after a two-year layoff because of personal problems, including drugs, does not have a high enough ranking to win selection for the Atlanta Games under Olympic rules.

Jurisprudence

A prosecutor in Frankfurt, Germany, disagreed with a report that Steffi Graf knew what happened to her earnings, allegedly funneled out of Germany for years by her father to avoid paying taxes.

The report says that Graf family tax advisor, Joachim Eckardt, who is in jail and charged in the case, said Graf knew the details of what was happening to her money.

Eckardt and Graf’s father, Peter Graf are charged with failing to report $28 million of his daughter’s earnings to evade $13.3 million in taxes between 1987 and 1993.

Former Arizona Cardinal player Luis Sharpe, 35, pleaded guilty to possessing drug paraphernalia and no contest to aggravated assault.

Olympics

Dagmar Thorpe, granddaughter of late Olympic star Jim Thorpe, said she wants the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games to invite her mother, Grace, if not all six of his children, to the Games.

World 400-meter record-holder Kieren Perkins finished third in the event in the Australian Olympic trials, failing to make the team. He also holds the 800- and 1,500-meter world records and swims the 1,500 trial on Saturday.

Football

Baltimore, which just moved from Cleveland, plays host to Oakland, which moves all the time, in one of 13 games on Sept. 1, opening day of the NFL season. The season will run 17 weeks, through the weekend of Dec. 21-23.

The Kansas City Chiefs re-signed running back Marcus Allen, 36, for three years. . . . The New York Jets said veteran tight end Johnny Mitchell is free to make a free-agent deal for himself.

Greg Croxton, fired after more than 10 years as Michigan State’s academic advisor because the school said he helped football players stay eligible by trying to get faculty to change grades, has denied the charge.

Aaron Jackson, a former defensive lineman, has said Croxton, “offered professors jobs, offered them tickets to games, all kinds of stuff like that. All they were worried about was getting me eligible to play.”

Miscellany

Canadians Mark MacKay and Benoit Doucet scored for their adopted country, Germany, which beat Canada, 5-1, in the World Ice Hockey Championships in Vienna.

Bosnia, emerging from 4 1/2 years of civil war, played a scoreless tie against Albania in Zenica, about 30 miles northwest of Sarajevo. It was Bosnia’s first home international soccer game. Before the war, Bosnian players were part of Yugoslavia’s national team.

Basketball

The NBA Board of Governors voted to postpone consideration of the Clippers’ application to play an unspecified number of games at the Pond next season, a league source said. Spokesman for the Clippers and the NBA declined comment.

The NCAA has reduced the number of timeouts allowed per team from three to two during televised games. The number of 20-second timeouts was increased from two to three.

The NBA Board of Governors officially approved the sale of the Philadelphia 76ers by Harold Katz to Comcast Corp.

Southland Report

UCLA’s spring football scrimmage is today at Spalding Field, beginning with practice at 3:45 and then the scrimmage from 4:30-5:30. It is free to the public and players will be available after the game for half an hour for autographs and photos.

The 49th Newport Beach-to-Ensenada Sailboat Race begins Friday off the entrance to Newport Harbor. The first boat leaves at noon, with waves of boats sailing every 10 minutes afterward.