Sampras Gets Fast Start With Victory

It was a bit unusual when second-seeded Pete Sampras beat Mariano Zabaleta, 6-4, 6-2, in the opening round at the Tennis Masters Series-Cincinnati on Tuesday.

Not that Sampras won. He usually does.

More unusual was that he played, because Sampras hasn’t had a first-round match at the Mason, Ohio, tournament since 1990, when it was called the ATP Championship. But with the new Masters Series format expanding the draw from 56 to 64 players, everybody plays in the first round and that suits him fine.

“I’ve never been crazy about a bye because you’re playing someone [in the second round] who’s used to the court and the balls,” Sampras said.

This is his second tournament since winning at Wimbledon, despite tendinitis in his left shin. Since then, he withdrew from Davis Cup and lost in the quarterfinals last week at Toronto.

In other Tuesday matches, top-seeded Andre Agassi defeated Wayne Ferreira, 7-5 (4), 6-1, and sixth-seeded Alex Corretja, who had an 11-match winning streak, was upset by Jonas Bjorkman, 6-4, 6-4.

Golf

John Cook made a six-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole to win the Fred Meyer Challenge with Mark O’Meara for the second time.

The Cook-O’Meara team shot an 11-under-par 61 in the second round and finished 36 holes at the Reserve Vineyards & Golf Club tied at 19-under 125 with Jim Furyk and David Frost in the best-ball event at Aloha, Ore.

O’Meara and Cook split $180,000 in prize money.

Fred Couples won $20,000 with a 12th-hole birdie and $25,000 with a 14th-hole eagle to finish with $135,000 and the top spot in the two-day Export A Skins Game in Vernon, Canada.

Couples could have won more money, but he lost a four-hole playoff with defending champion Mike Weir for the final carryover of $75,000. Sergio Garcia earned $100,000 with six skins in the two-day, 18-hole event, and Phil Mickelson took home $50,000.

Leigh Anne Hardin birdied her final hole to clinch medalist honors at the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Portland.

The 144-player field was trimmed to 64 for the start of match play today. The final is Saturday.

Track and Field

NCAA long jump champion Savante Stringfellow of Mississippi was added to the U.S. Olympic team, less than a month after failing to qualify at the track and field trials.

Stringfellow placed fifth at the trials in Sacramento, and the top three finishers in each event qualified for the Sydney Games. But Walter Davis (third) and Robert Howard (fourth) also qualified for the triple jump and decided to compete in that. Qualifying rounds for the triple jump and long jump are held on the same day, so the athletes could not do both.

Stringfellow will join Melvin Lister and Dwight Phillips as long jumpers.

American Allen Johnson, undaunted by rain, won the men’s 110-meter hurdles for the fourth time at the Gugl Grand Prix in Linz, Austria, finishing in 13.15 seconds.

Johnson, who has the year’s best time of 12.97, beat fellow Americans Terrance Trammell (13.21) and Dominique Arnold (13.27).

Miscellany

The defending Olympic gold medalist U.S. women’s soccer team announced it would take part in a 12-city indoor tour after the 2000 Sydney Games, playing 12 matches against a world all-star team. The tour, similar to the one last fall in the wake of the U.S. team’s victory in the third FIFA Women’s World Cup, will begin Oct. 20 at the First Union Spectrum in Philadelphia and end Dec. 15 at San Jose Arena. The team will play at the San Diego Sports Arena on Nov. 30.

Amanda Scott, Kelly Kretschmann and Julie Smith, players who protested being left off the U.S. Olympic softball team, settled those appeals, allowing the team to defend its gold medal in Sydney with its original roster.

The selections had been wiped out twice because of appeals. A third round of arbitration threatened to cast the team into turmoil only weeks before it was to leave for Australia.

Park Seh-jik, the head of South Korea’s organizing committee for soccer’s 2002 World Cup, resigned amid reports of personnel conflicts.

Some committee members reportedly were unhappy with Park’s handling of the budget.

The International Cycling Union found no positive drug test results in last month’s Tour de France, though 45% of special government tests came back positive. The French cycling federation said almost all the riders who failed those tests had medical reasons for using banned substances.

French officials, acting under a tough anti-doping law, carried out their own tests to make sure riders complied. Tour de France organizers had no comment.

Meadowlark Lemon, known as the “Clown Prince of Basketball” during his years with the Harlem Globetrotters, was named the winner of the Hall of Fame’s John Bunn Award for outstanding contribution to basketball.

Hockey

YankeeNets LLC said it sold enough limited partnerships in the New Jersey Devils to buy the Stanley Cup champions for $175 million by Aug. 31, owner John McMullen’s deadline.

YankeeNets, the entity formed by the merger of the New York Yankees and New Jersey Nets, could owe McMullen a $30-million penalty and cancel the sale if the purchase isn’t completed by the end of the month.

Dallas avoided arbitration with Jere Lehtinen, signing him to a four-year contract. . . . Edmonton signed center Todd Marchant to a two-year, $2.7 million contract. . . . Brad McCrimmon was hired by Calgary to be an assistant under new Coach Don Hay.

Auto Racing

Police are angry that New Hampshire International Speedway failed to tell them about the crash deaths of NASCAR drivers Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin and because in one case track personnel moved the car before local authorities arrived.

“If there is an untimely death, certainly they have to tell us,” Robert Fiske, police chief of Loudon, N.H., said. “We need to know it so we can investigate it.”