He’s No Dean, but Martin Is a Star in His Own Right

He’s not Pete Sampras.

He’s not Andre Agassi.

Hair flecked with gray, his 30th birthday two months past, he’s not a young buck with movie-star looks and a Ford modeling contract a la Jan-Michael Gambill.

And so Todd Martin goes mostly unnoticed unless he’s making a run deep into a Grand Slam tournament, as he did last summer in reaching the U.S. Open final and as he has done this week at the National Tennis Center.

Not that many fans will stay up until all hours of the night to watch him play.

Only a few hundred hearty, shivering souls were on hand in Arthur Ashe Stadium when Martin wrapped up a 6-7 (3), 6-7 (7), 6-1, 7-6 (6), 6-2 victory over Carlos Moya of Spain at 1:19 a.m. EDT.

The dramatic victory, accomplished in 4 hours 15 minutes, moved Martin into the quarterfinals to play Thomas Johansson of Sweden, who defeated qualifier Wayne Arthurs of Australia, 6-4, 6-7 (7), 6-3, 6-4, about eight hours earlier.

Martin, who has never won a Grand Slam tournament, staged a similar late-night comeback in last year’s round of 16, rallying from two sets down to eliminate Greg Rusedski of Britain, 5-7, 0-6, 7-6 (3), 6-4, 6-4, en route to the final, where he lost to Agassi.

He did it the hard way again, failing to serve out the first set when leading, 6-5, and squandering two set points in the second-set tiebreaker.

Martin survived match point in the fourth-set tiebreaker with a volley winner, then closed out the set with a forehand winner.

At the end, after Moya sailed a forehand wide on match point, Martin spiked his racket onto the court, leaving it bent and mangled, and raised his arms as he let out a mighty roar.

The usually reserved Martin then took a victory lap around the court, high-fiving seemingly every person left in the stadium.

“I feel great,” he said. “I feel terrible, but I feel great. It’s totally awesome. Better than last year.”

After losing the first two sets, he said, “I was feeling a little bushed, but I got it back in the third. . . . I got a little lucky in the fourth, but I hung in there.”

He dominated the fifth.

Earlier, Nicolas Kiefer of Germany bounced third-seeded Magnus Norman of Sweden, 6-2, 6-7 (3), 6-1, 6-3, leaving Sampras as the only one of the top five seeded players to reach the quarterfinals.

“I was not sharp enough today,” said Norman, who had to rally from a two-set deficit Sunday night to defeat Max Mirnyi of Belarus in a stirring third-round match that lasted 4 hours 6 minutes. “My rhythm wasn’t there. My head wasn’t really there. My body wasn’t really there. He didn’t make it easier for me, either.”

Norman, who said he was bothered by a sore throat, made 59 unforced errors and was successful on only two of 16 break points.

Next for Kiefer is sixth-seeded Marat Safin of Russia, who beat 12th-seeded Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2, in 83 minutes.

First, though, Kiefer will try to get a good night’s sleep. He was staying across the street from the United Nations, which this week is hosting a gathering of 150 world leaders that is wreaking havoc with traffic and security in Manhattan, but had to move.

“I had very bad night,” he said. “There were so many bomb [threats], I had to change hotel yesterday. It was only stress for me. I couldn’t relax one minute since my [third-round] match.”