Sampras Polishing Off Game and Opponent

The Pete Sampras project, a.k.a. the not so young and the restless, inched forward nicely in the desert here Monday night.

The greatest player in the history of the game, as measured by his unprecedented 13 titles in Grand Slam events, played a bit with fire in the first round of the Pacific Life Open, as is his wont, and almost got burned before turning it on like a player much younger than 30. Singed by Sampras’ afterburners was a youngster named Mardy Fish, 10 years Sampras’ junior and a qualifier for this event.

The final score in this featured match of the day was 7-6 (5), 6-2, and for a while in the first set, it looked as if, for Sampras, this was either going to be the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. With Sampras these days, there are images of Kobe Bryant taking off from 10 feet and dunking and images of Willis Reed limping out of the tunnel--often in the same match.

Sampras, two-time winner of this event, but seeded 10th this year and without a title since the historic 2000 Wimbledon when he won Grand Slam No. 13, nevertheless was playing a newcomer who was seeing the greatest serve in tennis for the first time in a match, was wearing black shoes and a bright red shirt and doesn’t even spell his name right.

Yet the master was struggling.

There were no break points in the first set, and Sampras was spraying baseline shots like a guy trying to kill mosquitoes. His serve, of course, was keeping him in it, and one of the more potent weapons in sport carried him all the way to a tiebreaker. At 5-5 of the tiebreaker, it was youth that was not served.

Fish, a big server who feels most comfortable staying on the baseline, rather than following in his blasts, decided to approach the net. But he did so behind a cross-court forehand, presenting Sampras, who has one of the most dangerous forehands in the game, with a choice of angles. He chose a cross-court blast, and Fish, uncomfortable inside the service lines, clunked a forehand volley into the net.

Sampras said afterward that Fish had made a good play and had merely taken his eye off the ball. But the netted volley gave Sampras set point on his serve, and, for what seems like the 10-millionth time in his career, he toed the line and cranked an ace, this one at 116 mph.

The second set might as well have been Kobe making slam dunks.

Matter of fact, the only startling part of the evening, other than Fish taking Sampras to a tiebreaker, was Sampras heading back out to the practice courts with new coach Jose Higueras immediately after the match.

Asked later how long it had been since he practiced after finishing a match, he smiled and said, “Been a long time, maybe 10 years.”

The smile probably meant that the real answer was never.

Sampras appears to be as sincere about this new push to get back to the top as he has ever been. He says he chose Higueras, after recently parting coaching company with close friends Paul Annacone and Tom Gullikson simply because Annacone and Gullikson were, indeed, close friends.

“I was too comfortable,” Sampras said.

Other highlights of Monday’s first-round men’s action included a tough 6-4, 6-4 victory by No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt over former No. 1 Carlos Moya. Spaniard Moya had a cup of coffee at No. 1 two years ago, a ranking achieved at this event. Hewitt, the Australian who beat Sampras in last year’s U.S. Open final, has now won 13 matches in a row in the United States.

Also winning was the player who beat Sampras in the U.S. Open final the year before, Russian Marat Safin. Safin beat a little fireplug from Spain, Alberto Martin, who had four sets points at 5-6 of the second set, couldn’t convert, and then lost a tiebreaker for a final 6-3, 7-6 (4) result. Safin, with perhaps the greatest body and physical prowess in the men’s game but missing the matching mental part, overcame crying babies, annoying public-address announcement ads from nearby courts and his own general lack of focus at key moments to eventually simply outmuscle the 160-pound Martin.

Second-seeded Yevgeny Kafelnikov of Russia, at 28 also drifting into what Sampras is now calling the “twilight period,” beat up on his personal punching bag, Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden, 7-5, 6-3. They have played eight times and Kafelnikov has won eight.

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