Pierce Has Finishing Touch

The finish line was agonizingly close. Mary Pierce was fidgeting, fussing and flexing at the French Open.

Doesn’t she always?

Pierce’s quirks are, at times, high theater and, at other times, sheer annoyance to an opponent.

But on Thursday, her body was rebelling, pulling a Michael Chang, starting to cramp in the third set of her semifinal match against top-seeded Martina Hingis.

Hingis, meanwhile, was battling her French Open demons, namely tantrums of Paris past, the swirling winds and her tiredness. The old Hingis might have sensed vulnerability and taken advantage. The new Hingis looked full of doubt, seemingly stunned that she survived a match point in the second set.

Pierce was helped across the line by two final Hingis errors--a backhand long and forehand wide--and prevailed, 6-4, 5-7, 6-2, in 2 hours 10 minutes.

In Saturday’s final, the sixth-seeded Pierce will play a resurgent 28-year-old, fifth-seeded Conchita Martinez. In an All-Spanish semifinal, she beat three-time champion and eighth-seeded Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, 6-1, 6-2, in 79 minutes.

For Martinez, winner of the 1994 Wimbledon, this will be her first Grand Slam final since she lost to Hingis at the 1998 Australian Open. For the 25-year-old Pierce, this is her first Grand Slam final since 1997, also against Hingis in Australia.

Pierce landed in this one the hard way. She lamented the lost match point, having smacked a backhand long in the 10th game of the second set. Whether it was coincidental or not, Hingis started playing better once her romantic interest, Magnus Norman, showed up to watch.

“I was contemplating suicide in the third set,” Pierce said, laughing. “I think it was nervousness. I wanted to win, to finish it off. I was nervous and she was nervous.”

The next flash point came shortly after Pierce took control in the third set, breaking Hingis in the sixth game to go ahead, 4-2. Hingis was unnerved and talking to herself. Then Pierce started cramping, which had never happened to her during a match.

“It just came all of a sudden at 4-2 in the third set, during a point, I just hit a backhand and fell to the ground almost,” she said. “I had a big cramp in my left calf. Then it stopped. And another backhand, another cramp.

“I think I won the point. I don’t know how.”

Pierce held and then broke serve at 5-2 and, in retrospect, was not sure how much longer she could have played. She needed nearly three hours of treatment before she arrived for her post-match news conference, including an IV. The cramping she had in her calf started to spread when she sat down for a brief television interview.

“I don’t know how I’m going to feel tomorrow,” she said.

Said Hingis: “If you play for two hours and you have to run from one corner to the other, I think we were both already kind of tired. Even if I would be able to still [hold] serve and do things, it was too late for me.

“I was already lucky to come back from that match point down. It was just too much against a player like Mary today.”

She trailed, 7-5, 3-1, before rallying to take the second set, changing her strategy. She used more topspin, knowing it was futile to try to overpower Pierce. But Pierce was effective at pulling Hingis wide, creating sharp cross-court angles, especially with her forehand.

Now, Pierce will try to become the first French woman to win in Paris since Francoise Durr in 1967. She is 10-6 against Martinez. Martinez won their last meeting on clay, at the French Open last year. Pierce, however, is a different player this year, and so is Martinez, who is being helped by a Spanish psychologist here.

“I’ve decided to play tennis with a smile on my face, which was really hard the past years,” Martinez said. “It’s been working.”

As for Hingis, she leaves Paris again without a singles title. For the most part, she kept her temper in check. There was no repeat of the explosion against Steffi Graf in last year’s final, and she seemed strangely flat, lacking creativity.

A columnist from the Times of London, Simon Barnes, wondered whether she would ever succeed here, writing: “Martina Hingis finds herself in a reverse Bogart situation. At least he always had Paris. When she dies, they’ll find the word, Paris, inscribed on her heart.”

Hingis used words of optimism, but her body language and voice contradicted that.

“As I said the other day, I don’t need the French Open to survive,” she said. “I think I’ll stick with that one rule. There are many other players who have never won this tournament. I have a lot of years in front of me.

“Pierce and Martinez have never won this tournament. One of them is going to win. One is 25, the other 28. I have nothing to worry about right now.”

*

In the men’s semifinals today, third-seeded Norman faces unseeded Franco Squillari of Argentina, followed by fifth-seeded Gustavo Kuerten of Brazil against 16th-seeded Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain.

Norman has defeated Squillari twice, including 6-3, 6-4 in the first round at Indian Wells in March. Kuerten and the 20-year-old Ferrero have never played.

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French Open at a Glance

Highlights Thursday from the $10.25-million French Open tennis championships at Roland Garros:

* Results: Women’s singles: No. 5 Conchita Martinez defeated fellow Spaniard Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, 6-1, 6-2; No. 6 Mary Pierce of France beat top-ranked Martina Hingis of Switzerland, 6-4, 5-7, 6-2.

* Stat of the Day: 36--number of shots in one rally between Sanchez-Vicario and Martinez.

* Quote of the Day: “I was contemplating suicide in the third set.”--Pierce on how she felt after she lost match point in the 10th game of the second set.

TODAY’S MEN’S SEMIFINALS

* Franco Squillari, Argentina, vs. Magnus Norman (3), Sweden.

* Gustavo Kuerten (5), Brazil, vs. Juan Carlos Ferrero (16), Spain.