Sampras, Williams Emerge on Another Rainy Day

Rain pelted the National Tennis Center again Monday, threatening to turn the U.S. Open into Wimbledon.

In between storms, Pete Sampras ended the surprising run of qualifier Hyung-Taik Lee of South Korea, defending champion Serena Williams survived three set points before delivering a knockout punch to Jelena Dokic of Australia and fourth-seeded Mary Pierce of France, suffering from a shoulder injury, retired from her match against Anke Huber of Germany.

Todd Martin, a finalist here last year, and top-seeded Martina Hingis of Switzerland each spent less than 30 minutes on court in winning matches that were suspended Sunday night because of rain.

Later, in a night match, second-seeded Lindsay Davenport eliminated Justine Henin of Belgium, who had disappointed a legion of male fans Saturday with her victory over Anna Kournikova.

It added up to a disjointed day of tennis, one that started out hot and sticky and ended cool and breezy.

Sampras, no stranger to weather breaks after winning seven Wimbledon championships, moved into the quarterfinals after waiting out a nearly 2 1/2-hour rain delay in the second set of his 7-6 (7), 6-2, 6-4 victory over the 182nd-ranked Lee.

Lee, only the third Korean man to play in a Grand Slam event and the first to make it out of the first round, came out swinging, bolstered by a group of Korean fans who had followed his improbable rise from obscurity. But losing the first set deflated him.

On set point in the tiebreaker, Lee hit an apparent winner to pull to within 5-6, with two serves by Lee coming up, but he was called for a foot violation after running into the net, ending the set.

“He wasn’t overwhelmed by the situation, playing me on center court,” Sampras said of Lee, who had three break points in the sixth game but none the rest of the way. “He came out and held his own. But after I got the first set, I started to settle down and started playing a little bit better. . . .

“It’s like a batter, if he’s seeing a pitcher he’s never seen. It takes you a while to feel it out.”

Sampras is much more familiar with his next opponent, Richard Krajicek of the Netherlands, who advanced with a 7-6 (11), 6-4, 6-1 victory over Dominik Hrbaty of Slovakia.

Krajicek, a former Wimbledon champion, is 6-3 against Sampras.

“It’s not going to be an easy match,” said Sampras, who had lost four in a row against Krajicek before winning last month at Cincinnati. “He’s a guy who gives me a lot of trouble.”

Martin had no trouble moving into the round of 16, wrapping up a 7-6 (5), 6-3, 6-2 victory over 10th-seeded Cedric Pioline of France in only 23 minutes after play was resumed with Martin leading, 2-0, in the third set.

“Fortunately, my game picked up maybe a little bit in this short period of time,” Martin said, “and his dropped a little bit.”

On the women’s side, Williams and Davenport are headed for a quarterfinal matchup after Williams defeated Dokic, 7-6 (7), 6-0, and Davenport beat Henin, 6-0, 6-4.

Dokic, who gets more notice for her father’s out-of-control behavior than her on-court accomplishments, held a 7-6 lead in the tiebreaker before hitting three consecutive shots into the net.

“If I would have won the first set, maybe I would have won the match in two sets,” Dokic said. “You get on a roll, you’ve won the set. The pressure’s on her. She’s the defending champion.”

The defending champion overwhelmed Dokic in the second set, as Davenport did Henin in the first.

“I was really happy I got off to such a great start,” Davenport said. “A couple games I didn’t play so well in the second set, but I’m happy with the way it went.”

Pierce, the French Open champion, never even made it to the second set, calling it quits after dropping the first to Huber, 6-4.

“In the warmup this morning, it was sore from the very first serve that I hit,” Pierce said of her ailing right shoulder. “With each one, it just kept getting worse.”

Hingis, meanwhile, continued to inflict pain on her opponents, storming through 11th-seeded Sandrine Testud of France, 6-2, 6-1, after play was resumed with Hingis leading in the second set, 1-0.

Hingis has dropped only 10 games in reaching the quarterfinals, where Monica Seles awaits.

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Seles, who has not played in Germany since she was stabbed during a changeover at a tournament in Hamburg in 1993, said she will not play in the WTA Tour’s season-ending championships next year, when the weeklong event moves to Munich after a 29-year run at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

The tournament will offer $3 million in prize money, $1 million more than will be available in this year’s Chase Championships, and will start in late October, about three weeks earlier than it has traditionally been played.

Featured Matches

The schedule of matches on the show courts and others involving seeded players. Play begins at 8 a.m. PDT:

DAY SESSION

* Nicolas Kiefer (14), Germany, vs. Magnus Norman (3), Sweden

* Venus Williams (3), vs. Nathalie Tauziat (8), France

* Marat Safin (6), Russia, vs. Juan Carlos Ferrero (12), Spain

NIGHT SESSION

* Martina Hingis (1), Switzerland, vs. Monica Seles (6)

* Carlos Moya, Spain, vs. Todd Martin

* Thomas Johansson, Sweden, vs. Wayne Arthurs, Australia

Glance

* Today on TV: USA, 8 a.m., 4:30 p.m.

* Stat of the day: 7--The number of break points Pete Sampras failed to convert before finally breaking Hyung-Taik Lee’s serve in the second game of the second set. It was the first break of serve in his match against the 182nd-ranked Lee.

* Quote of the day: “It’s like watching three yards and a cloud of dust Big Ten football compared to SEC or Pac-10 offenses. I’m a product of the Big Ten.”

--Todd Martin, who attended Northwestern, on his style of play.