Ivanisevic Tags Loss on Kuerten

Gustavo Kuerten is ending the year in a slump, and his No. 1 ranking could slip away at the Masters Cup in Sydney, Australia.

Kuerten couldn’t handle Goran Ivanisevic’s tricky serve Tuesday and lost to the Wimbledon champion, 6-2, 6-7 (2), 6-4. Kuerten won six of his 16 career titles in 2001, but he has only one victory in his last eight matches, dating to the U.S. Open in September.

Earlier Tuesday at the $3.7-million event played on indoor hard courts, Yevgeny Kafelnikov beat Juan Carlos Ferrero, 4-6, 6-1, 7-6 (5). Kafelnikov blamed his erratic start on a high net and jet lag.

Ivanisevic--who this year became the first wild-card entry to win Wimbledon--was 13th in the Champions Race but was invited to this eight-man tournament as a winner of a Grand Slam event.

With his No. 1 ranking in the ATP Champions Race in jeopardy, three-time French Open champion Kuerten needed a victory to increase his lead on No. 2 Lleyton Hewitt and No. 3 Andre Agassi, who won here Monday. Kuerten’s lead in the Champions Race has slipped to 28 points.

“The second game of the third set was the most important,” Ivanisevic said. “I saved a lot of break points with a lot of aces, then I broke him straight away.” Agassi, who finished No. 1 in 1999, and Hewitt are the only players with a chance of preventing Kuerten from finishing consecutive seasons at No. 1.

Kuerten had 771 points going into the week, while Hewitt had 723 and Agassi 684. Hewitt and Agassi meet in a round-robin match today, and Pat Rafter takes on Sebastien Grosjean.

Players get 20 points for a win in each of their three round-robin matches here, 40 points for a semifinal victory, and 50 if they win the tournament.

Motor Racing

Car owner Robert Yates ordered his pit crew members to begin wearing headgear, a reaction to the pit-lane accident that seriously injured one of his employees.

“We have an opportunity to make our sport safer--our pit crew guys will now all have helmets,” said Yates, who owns the cars driven by Ricky Rudd and Dale Jarrett. “Hopefully we’ve learned something from this accident that can make things better.

“We also need to keep looking at other preventive measures to make things better.”

Yates’ decision came as Bobby Burrell, a crewman for Rudd, remained in serious but stable condition with a head injury after the accident during the race Sunday in Homestead, Fla.

Burrell, who is conscious, was moved out of the intensive care unit Tuesday and into a private room in a Florida hospital. He’s been able to communicate verbally, and spoke with Yates on Monday.

Two other crewmen for Rudd and a NASCAR official also were also injured.

They were hurt when Ward Burton’s car banged off Casey Atwood’s driver-side door and veered into the crewmen and Rudd’s car, which was up on a jack in its stall.

Miscellany

Thom Piscopink shot a six-under-par 66 to take a one-stroke lead after the first round of the Senior PGA Tour’s qualifying tournament at Calimesa.

Bill Thorpe, the brother of senior tour player Jim Thorpe, was second, and Howard Twitty, Don Pooley and Australia’s Rodger Davis opened with 68s on the Champions Course at the PGA of Southern California Golf Club. The top eight players in the 72-hole tournament will receive full exemptions for the 2002 season.

Tara VanDerveer and Marianne Stanley, who coached NCAA champions at Stanford and Old Dominion, respectively, are among eight people joining the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Tenn., on April 26-27.

Others in the class are Olympians Cindy Brogdon and Kamie Ethridge, five-time AAU champion Margaret Sexton Gleaves, Brazilian star Hortencia de Fatima Marcari Oliva, high school coach Sandra Meadows and Lea Plarski, founding member of the women’s division of the National Junior College Athletic Assn.

Five pitchers combined to throw Team USA’s fourth World Cup shutout in an 8-0 victory over Italy at Taipei, Taiwan, moving the Americans within one win of a spot in the medal round.

Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Cuba all qualified for the medal round Tuesday, while the Netherlands, Nicaragua and Panama were also one win away from clinching a playoff spot.

The United States can clinch a berth by beating France today.

The Washington Freedom traded Brazilian forward Pretinha to the San Jose CyberRays for forward Jacqui Little and a third-round pick in the 2003 draft.

The Freedom’s first trade ever breaks up the Brazilian duo of Pretinha and Roseli. It also reunites Little with her twin sister, Skylar, a starting defender for the Freedom.