Rios Is Breathing Easier This Week

Marcelo Rios of Chile showed why he’s the world’s top-ranked player Tuesday, fighting off Bob Bryan’s upset bid to advance to the RCA Championships round of 16 with a 6-4, 6-4 victory at Indianapolis.

The tournament’s second-seeded player wasn’t so lucky. Thomas Johansson of Sweden knocked off Carlos Moya of Spain, 6-7 (5-7), 6-0, 6-1.

Moya was fined $1,000 for leaving without comment.

Rios had nine aces and won 25 of 27 first-serve points against Bryan, the NCAA champion from Stanford.

After being ousted in the first round at Cincinnati last week, Rios said he’s using this tournament to prepare for the Aug. 31-Sept. 13 U.S. Open.

“I’m trying to run with every point and trying to play as hard as I can,” Rios said after winning his ATP tour-leading 49th match of the year. “I was sick with an allergy, but I’m trying to come through and trying to play as best I can. I think I’m going to be OK for the U.S. Open.”

Thomas Muster of Austria, seeded 12th, defeated Paul Goldstein, 6-2, 6-2.

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Steffi Graf, hampered by injuries in the last year, showed flashes of brilliance in her second-round match against Spain’s Virginia Ruano-Pascual, needing only 41 minutes for a 6-0, 6-1 victory in the Canadian Open at Montreal.

“I was surprised that I was feeling that good because I’ve been training hard for the past 10 days,” Graf said.

Monica Seles also moved into the third round with 6-2, 6-1 win over Tara Snyder. Mary Joe Fernandez took advantage of an ineffectual performance by 13th-seeded Mary Pierce of France to win, 6-1, 6-1, and Lisa Raymond lost to her American Fed Cup teammate Corina Morariu, 7-6 (7-5), 1-6, 6-2.

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Lleyton Hewitt of Australia defeated Sargis Sargsian of Armenia, 6-3, 6-4, and Rainer Schuttler of Germany upset 14th-seeded Nicolas Escude of France, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, in the Pilot Pen International tournament at New Haven, Conn.

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Jennifer Capriati and Patrick McEnroe were among 16 players receiving wild-card entries into the U.S. Open.

Hockey

Scotty Bowman, who has coached the Detroit Red Wings to consecutive Stanley Cup championships, is not expected to return to the team until at least late October, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Bowman, 64, was to undergo surgery today to have his left knee replaced at a New York hospital. He is expected to be hospitalized for about a week and then need to undergo rehabilitation for another 6-12 weeks.

Bowman, who had an angioplasty last month, has said he would not decide whether to coach the Red Wings until his health issues are resolved.

George Burnett has been hired as an assistant coach by the Mighty Ducks. Burnett coached the Guelph Storm in the Ontario Hockey League last season and coached the Canadian national junior team this summer.

Soccer

Eduardo Hurtado scored the go-ahead goal in the 49th minute and the New York-New Jersey MetroStars went on to defeat the Colorado Rapids, 4-1, in a Major League Soccer game played before 10,217 at East Rutherford, N.J.

Argentina’s Diego Maradona is planning a seventh return to the pro ranks with second-division Spanish team Badajoz.

Auto Racing

Michael Waltrip, winless in a Winston Cup career that began in 1985, said this will be his final season driving for the famed Wood Brothers team.

“We both agreed we should try something different,” said Waltrip, who is 15th in the 1998 standings and hasn’t finished better than ninth this year.

Prosecutors at Albuquerque ran out of time to try former Indy car champion Bobby Unser on misdemeanor charges of careless driving and resisting arrest.

The deadline for trying the three-time Indianapolis 500 winner on the 1994 charges passed July 22, State District Judge Richard Knowles ruled Monday.

Miscellany

Elmer W. “Ed” Harris, the father of Laker Coach Del Harris, has died at his home in Crossville, Tenn., of heart failure. Harris, who was 88, is also survived by his wife of 69 years, Wilma.

Portugal’s Antonio Pinto, who drinks four or five bottles of wine a week, mostly from his own vineyard, won the 10,000-meter run at the European track championships at Budapest, Hungary. Pinto was timed in 27 minutes, 48.62 seconds.

Other winners on the first day of the six-day meet were Alexander Bagach of Ukraine in the shotput and Ilya Markov of Russia in the 20-kilometer walk.