Rafter Manages to Get Out of Jam

By LISA DILLMAN

Sept. 2, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEW YORK —

His volley was sailing, flying and seemingly landing anywhere except in the court the first two sets.

If that wasn’t enough trouble for defending U.S. Open champion Patrick Rafter of Australia, there was the matter of his opponent Hicham Arazi of Morocco.

Arazi, a clay-court specialist, was suddenly looking like a clone of Andre Agassi or Marcelo Rios, standing inside the baseline and taking the ball on the rise.

All this meant the third-seeded Rafter was holding history on his racket in a perilous third set--the wrong kind of history. He nearly became the first defending U.S. Open champion to lose in the first round but escaped with a 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-1 victory on Tuesday night in a contentious match.

Rafter, who saved two break points in the seventh game of the third set, was blissfully unfamiliar with Open history.

“No, I wasn’t aware of that,” he said. “I figured I’d go on vacation, I thought I was going to see Pearl Jam [on Sept. 9].” So much for those plans.

He has become something of a fifth-set specialist. The 25-year-old Australian is 10-2 in five-set matches and has now rallied from a two-set-to-none deficit four times.

That does not mean he is feeling confident about his chances here.

“Not really,” he said. “I did this at the French Open [this year]. I want to try to sharpen up a few things before my next match.”

If Arazi, who has never won a match at the U.S. Open, didn’t quite self-destruct, he had some help. He disputed several calls, including a key one in the fourth game of the fourth set. At deuce, Arazi appeared to get a break point with a backhand winner. But it was called wide. Television replays were inconclusive.

Rafter won that game, tying the set, 2-2. Arazi, still angered, had words with chair umpire Norm Chryst on the next changeover, sarcastically applauding him. “You’re always right. You are never wrong,” Arazi said.

In the fifth set, Arazi threw his racket and received a code violation. His game sagged, and every close call seemed to bother him.

“It happened two or three times, but I don’t think that is the reason I lost,” Arazi said. “ . . . When you see your opponent throwing the racket or getting angry, you feel good, you try to make him more angry.”

Rafter said that he was thoroughly outplayed in the first two sets. He admitted that he got fired up by Arazi’s antics.

“It was a good battle,” he said. “When I won the third set, I started feeling very confident and from then on he never had a look in. A few things agitated me on the court, which got me fired up.

“I didn’t appreciate the way he moved around on big points on my serve. I didn’t think that was really cool. Then he went on and on about line calls. He got me fired up. I wanted to really beat him up then.”

Arazi waffled when asked whether Rafter could repeat as Open champion.

“He’s played a lot of tournaments,” he said. “But yeah, he can do it. I mean, he’s a warrior.”

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