Sampras, Hingis Victory Tours Ready to Start Up Down Under

Professional tennis restarts its engines with its annual trek down under to Melbourne Park for the hot and steamy Australian Open. The sport’s story lines, having remained dormant for only a month, pick up right where they left off.

Which, on the men’s tour, is terrible news for those who hope someone other than Pete Sampras will dominate the four Grand Slam events.

Sampras ended his year on a sour note when a calf injury forced him to withdraw from the Davis Cup final against Sweden in late November. During his convalescence, Sampras stewed. The injury was irritating because it prevented him from playing golf during tennis’ brief off-season. It also caused him to formalize his operating philosophy for this season and beyond.

It is to be a similar but more emphatic approach than Sampras has taken to tennis: Grand Slam tournaments are everything. The rest--including Davis Cup--just don’t mean as much to Sampras.

This is the problem for the rest of the tour. Sampras is serving notice that he means to win every Grand Slam event, or kill himself trying. He has incentive. Sampras’ 10 Grand Slam tournament titles are two shy of equaling Roy Emerson’s record; breaking the record is well within his grasp this season.

As Sampras often says, it’s all about history now.

Sampras finished the year No. 1 for the fifth time and was voted the No. 1 player of the last 25 years, the kind of affirmation that hardly seems necessary, given his record.

Sampras opens here against Dutchman Sjeng Schalken, ranked No. 51, then could meet Swedish veteran Magnus Gustafsson in the second round.

Sampras defeated Carlos Moya in last year’s final, but the seventh-seeded Spaniard would not seem to pose that kind of threat this year. That position is occupied by Australia’s rising star, Patrick Rafter.

The pony-tailed Rafter capped his best season by winning the U.S. Open last September. He followed that by partying his way through Europe, as his brother put it.

His focus back on his game in the past weeks’ warm-up tournaments, Rafter has looked to be on his way back to last season’s form. But not quite there. Rafter’s dynamic tennis game surely will be tested here, but a real challenge will be to withstand the palpable public pressure to win his home country’s title.

The top five seeded man are Sampras, Rafter, Michael Chang, Jonas Bjorkman and Greg Rusedski.

As is always the case, trouble lurks among the unseeded players. The unseeded Andre Agassi is just such a dangerous floater. He won the Australian title in 1995 and, comeback or no, the 86th-ranked Agassi is still a player who’s capable of destroying someone’s day when he’s on his game.

Agassi’s problem as an unseeded player is to face a path strewn with tough players, beginning in the early rounds.

Or at least the sort-of early rounds. Agassi opens with a qualifier.

In the fourth round, Agassi could be the boulder in Rafter’s road to the final. To get to Agassi, the second-seeded Rafter has to win three other difficult matches.

He opens against the formidable Jeff Tarango, who can be, even in defeat, a nettlesome proposition.

“You aren’t going to get an easy match [against Tarango],” Rafter said. “He’s tough, depending on what sort of mood he’s in. If he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, that’s great, he can do that.”

Should the 25-year-old survive that opening match, he’s got possible matchups with former Australian Open finalist Todd Martin and No. 23-ranked Andrei Medvedev.

The top five seeded women are Martina Hingis, Lindsay Davenport, Amanda Coetzer, Iva Majoli and Mary Pierce.

Hingis began her near-sweep of Grand Slam events here last year. She tumbled from a horse and popped up unscathed, something she was unable to do before the French Open last year, possibly costing her the title.

The Swiss teenager is a heavy favorite to repeat her title. Hingis is on a path to meet Pierce in the quarterfinals, a replay of last year’s final.

Pierce, who won here in 1995, has a tough draw with Chanda Rubin a possible third-round opponent. Hingis’ projected third-round opponent is 16-year-old Anna Kournikova.

An intriguing first-round match on the women’s side will be between sixth-seeded Irina Spirlea and Serena Williams. It was Spirlea who crashed into Serena’s big sister, Venus, during a changeover in the semifinal of the U.S. Open. Both players were guilty of gamesmanship during the incident, but Spirlea’s expletive when referring to Williams earned her a $7,000 fine.

Williams never did respond but her father did, calling the Romanian a “big, white turkey.”

The winner of that match could meet Venus Williams in the next round. Venus Williams is unseeded but clearly a threat, having already beaten Hingis last week and advancing to the final at Sydney last Saturday. It is the U.S. Open finalist’s first trip to the Australian Open, but she claims that heat will be no problem for her.

As usual, there are a handful of top players who didn’t haul themselves and their entourages to Australia. Whether players are injured or merely choosing not to participate, the fact that the Australian Open field annually has significant holes among its seeded players does little to add to the tournament’s status as the least influential among the four Grand Slam events.

Missing among the men are No. 5 Yevgeny Kafelnikov, No. 11 Richard Krajicek and No. 28 Jim Courier.

Absent among the women are No. 28 Steffi Graf, No. 2 Jana Novotna, No. 5 Monica Seles, No. 10 Nathalie Tauziat and No. 12 Mary Joe Fernandez.

Australian Open at a Glance

MONDAY’S FEATURED MATCHES

* No. 1 Pete Sampras, Tampa, Fla. vs. Sjeng Schaiken, Netherlands

* No. 6 Irina Spirlea, Romania vs. Serena Williams, Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

* No. 4 Jonas Bjorkman, Sweden vs. Allen Belobrajdic, Australia

* TV: ESPN2, 9:30 p.m. tonight