Sampras Gathers No Moth in Win

Moths were dive-bombing the court, disrupting Cyclops and setting off the normally placid protagonist.

What started as a high-quality match Saturday night was threatening to turn into a science fiction movie in the early morning hours today: “Mothra: Who Ate The Seeds?”

Pete Sampras, with the help of his best weapon, his right arm, escaped the moths, ordered the beeping Cyclops machine turned off and survived the most dangerous foe of all, Nicolas Escude of France, at the Australian Open. Carrying the movie motif a little further, Escude is like the guy who keeps showing up in the next scene even after he goes over a cliff in a burning car.

Escude reached the semifinals here in 1998, and in three of his matches, he lost the first two sets before coming back to win. Fans in Melbourne know him as the man most responsible for winning the Davis Cup for France against Australia in December.

In this tournament, he saved two match points to beat Alex Calatrava of Spain in the second round. He saved three more against Sampras in the fourth-set tiebreaker today and forced a deciding fifth set. For Sampras, the most painful match point was the first, a double fault.

The eighth-seeded Sampras needed four more match points--bringing the total to seven--to finally put away No. 30 Escude, acing him down the middle to win the third-round match, 7-6 (5), 5-7, 6-4, 7-6 (6), 6-3, in 3 hours 50 minutes.

His reward: A fourth-round meeting against Marat Safin. Sampras and Safin are the only players remaining on the men’s side who own a Grand Slam singles title.

Sampras, who had 33 aces and 11 double faults, was relieved and made fun of his edginess over line calls and the Cyclops machine, which went off when moths landed on the service line. He even beat his heart once with his fist, delighting his entourage, which, at least temporarily, included an excited Sergio Garcia.

“I’m going to be the Mark Cuban of tennis,” Sampras said, jokingly. “There’s going to be mistakes out there and you’re going to have distractions, and it’s just a matter of keeping your composure.”

Said Escude: “I was thinking about the last round when I save the match point. But I don’t know if it’s a miracle or something like that, to win the fourth set.”