Serve Is Not Up for Sampras

This time, Houdini couldn’t escape. This time, the handcuffs didn’t come off, the ropes didn’t untie.

Pete Sampras, the second-seeded player in the Tennis Masters Series who had stumbled his way into the quarterfinals, tripped and fell this time. He lost at the Indian Wells Garden on Friday night to the always-dangerous Swede, Thomas Enqvist, in a 1-hour 33-minute match that featured lots of great tennis and lots of great lapses, the majority of the latter from Sampras.

It is a measure of the greatness of Sampras that he even got this match into a third set before losing, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3.

“You can’t keep escaping like I have,” said Sampras, who needed three sets to beat Wayne Ferreira in the second round and three to beat Byron Black in the third. “Thomas is a top-10 player. Not to take anything away from the guys I’ve beaten, but he’s at a much higher level.

“I just couldn’t really find my game tonight, from just about every aspect--my serve, my forehand was kind of off a little bit.”

Sampras, whom Enqvist called the “greatest player ever” and said it was “just an honor to go out on the court against him,” can live with a shaky forehand. He cannot live with a shaky serve. In this match, he died with it.

“I played two horrendous service games,” he said.

One came at 3-4 of the first set, when he hit three double faults and opened the door for Enqvist to serve it out at 6-3.

The second came at 2-3 of the third set, when he hit two double faults, including one at 15-40, and opened the door for Enqvist to win the match.

He had 10 double faults to go with his 10 aces, and because his serve, usually the best in the game, is the foundation for everything else he does, he underwent a general unraveling, finishing with 43 unforced errors.

Enqvist, seeded 10th, is 26 years old and has been on the tour since 1992. He has been ranked as high as No. 4 in the world, and his best finish in a Grand Slam event was the 1999 Australian Open, where he lost to Yevgeny Kafelnikov in the final.

Enqvist’s best advance yet at Indian Wells put him in one of today’s semifinals against another big bomber from the service line, Australia’s Mark Philippoussis. Philippoussis, seeded 12th, got a good match from unseeded Sjeng Schalken of the Netherlands before winning, 7-6 (7), 6-4.

The other semifinal will match Nicolas Lapentti of Ecuador and Alex Corretja of Spain. Lapentti, seeded eighth, made short work of Hicham Arazi of Morocco, hitting 17 winners to only four for Arazi and gaining the semifinals in 1 hour 10 minutes, 6-2, 6-0.

Unseeded Corretja, who got as high as No. 3 in 1998, took out Magnus Norman of Sweden, the sixth-seeded player, 4-6, 6-2, 6-2. Norman got in 70% of his first serves, but hit only 19 winners, allowing Corretja to beat him for the first time in three meetings.

Sampras’ focus remains clear: the record 13th Grand Slam title. He will play another tournament in the Tennis Masters Series next week in Miami, then play Davis Cup in Los Angeles April 7-9 before taking some time off and then heading to Europe for some clay-court events and preparation for the French Open. He has never won that Grand Slam event, and his style of play doesn’t set up well for him to break the record there.

But after the French in late May, Wimbledon is only a month away, and having won there six times, that appears to be a prime spot for the record-breaker.

If confidence is an issue, then Sampras, despite losing here, clearly is retaining the swagger it will take to get No. 13 soon.

When asked about his serving troubles against Enqvist, and about responding to that by hitting his second serve nearly as hard as the first, he explained: “I go for the big seconds because I can. I feel like I’ve got the ability to hit the best second serve in the world. Might as well use it.”

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The working relationship between Philippoussis and Pat Cash has ended, according to Philippoussis’ management agency.

Cash told the Sydney Daily-Telegraph: “I’ve been offered less than 50% of what they offered me last year. I’ve told them that’s not acceptable.”

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Staff Writer Lisa Dillman contributed to this story.