Grosjean Sends Ferrero Home Early

Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain was the last man standing Tuesday, the only male player with a Grand Slam title who still had a chance to win another here.

But by midafternoon, he too was gone, dispatched by Sebastian Grosjean, the Frenchman seeded 13th.

The round of 16 match was held over from Monday, when daylight ran out, and Grosjean eventually won out in two tiebreakers against this year’s French Open champion, 6-2, 4-6, 7-6 (2), 7-6 (3).

The result was of particular interest here because its winner was slotted to play Britain’s beloved Tim Henman in one of the four men’s quarterfinals today. At Grosjean’s press conference after his victory, the first question, from a British writer, was, “For the sake of European harmony and British history, would you consider playing very badly tomorrow?”

Grosjean laughed, the response most people have to British tennis.

Despite his No. 3-seeding, Ferrero’s advance to this stage had been a bit surprising. Spanish tennis players tend to break out in hives on grass.

In other men’s quarterfinals today, Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden will play Andy Roddick, Roger Federer of Switzerland will play Sjeng Schalken of the Netherlands, and Alexander Popp of Germany will play Mark Philippoussis of Australia and, currently, Cardiff By The Sea.

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Venus and Serena Williams did fine as individuals, each making it to the semifinals in singles, but were eliminated as a team, taking their first loss in women’s doubles since the round of 16 of the 2001 U.S. Open. They were beaten by Russians Elena Dementieva and Lina Krasnoroutskaya, 6-3, 3-6, 7-5.

The Williams sisters, who won the Olympic title in Sydney, were seeded third here, even though Venus had not played enough to have an established doubles ranking.

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A couple of Los Angeles-area players won a veterans’ doubles match. Derrick Rostagno of Brentwood and Leif Shiras of Laguna Hills beat Jim Grabb and Jacob Hlasek and can win the veterans’ title with two more wins.

Shiras, 43, is a tennis broadcaster who works for both Fox and Sky Network in England. Rostagno, 37, is a third-year student at Loyola Law School. Both had solid success on the pro tour, Rostagno perhaps a bit more than Shiras, including three wins over Pete Sampras.

Rostagno scored one of those victories here, beating Sampras in the second round in 1991, the year after Sampras had made his breakthrough with the U.S. Open title.

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When ATP players met with Mark Miles, their CEO, the Saturday before Wimbledon and decided to pursue alternatives to playing the Grand Slam tournaments, Miles might have thought he had considerable support.

But now, player agents, apparel manufacturers and officials from national federations have weighed in, many concerned that skipping a Slam would breach individual player contracts with companies such as Nike, Reebok and Adidas.

The ATP is trying to get more money from the Slam events. Should that not happen, the ATP could conduct alternative tournaments opposite the majors. The ATP wants 15 of the top 20 players to sign a letter of participation by Sunday.

“I think we did a good job of being clear with the players in telling them what would happen, that they would have lots of people who will try to convince them they should not stay together,” said ATP spokesman David Higdon, adding that the organization had been diligent in avoiding anything that would put the players in jeopardy with their individual contracts.

In the meantime, SFX Sports Group has advised its clients, among them Roddick, not to make any decisions until after Wimbledon, which ends Sunday. So the ATP, barring a drastic change, probably will not have the signatures of Lleyton Hewitt or Roddick by then.

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Times staff writer Lisa Dillman contributed to this report.