Safin Just Goes With the Flow for a Victory

Marat Safin, the Russian Mt. Vesuvius, took another temperamental journey to victory here Monday in the men’s opening round of the Pacific Life tennis tournament.

He beat a decent player, 53rd-ranked Austrian Stefan Koubek, 3-6, 6-3, 7-5, and moved into the second round of this Tennis Masters Series event, just as he should as the seventh-seeded player.

And while the volcanic eruptions coming from Safin weren’t at his all-time lava level, there was enough hot stuff flowing to make for a good show. In this one, give him a six on a scale of one to 10.

Safin can be as good as any player in the world. He is 6 feet 4, 195 pounds, 23 years old, was No. 2 in the world in 2000 and twice was within a match or two of becoming No. 1, and is the perpetrator of perhaps the only true rout of Pete Sampras in a second-week Grand Slam match, the 2000 U.S. Open final in which Safin made four errors and beat the best player in the world like he was a club player.

But along the way, the demons always seemed to show up. He has been projected as the tour’s next great racket-thrower by the current titleholder, Goran Ivanisevic. “He has it all, strength, follow-through,” Ivanisevic said here last year.

Sometimes, the demons cost Safin a match; sometimes, such as Monday, they inspire him to win.

Asked if his tirade over a missed baseline call in the third set helped or hurt him, Safin said, “Today it worked.”

He had some early break-point opportunities in the first set, and when he didn’t convert those, he went to some sort of lala land and lost the set, 6-3. Then, getting interested in the second set, he never lost a point in five service games and returned the 6-3 favor.

Then he lost the first three games of the third set and Safin watchers quickly turned on their eruption meters. Serving at 40-15, Safin watched a Koubek shot float just beyond the baseline. The linesman, however, called it good and the lava started to pour. Two minutes later, and one code violation from the umpire for “verbal abuse,” Safin was back playing -- and fuming. He eventually held serve when Koubek hit a shot long and when the same linesman called it out, Safin shrugged his shoulders in amazement, while standing and facing the official. In the NBA, they call that showing up the referee.

In the next game, Safin ran wide for a shot, grabbed his ankle and called for the trainer. That was another delay of several minutes. Asked about it after the match, Safin said he had a hole in his shoe. That prompted the following exchange during his news conference:

“You had a hole in your shoe?”

“Yes, I broke the shoe.”

“Sounds like you should have called a shoemaker instead of a trainer.”

“Easier to call a trainer than a shoemaker.”

Safin fought his way back into the set and the match, breaking Koubek’s serve at 5-5. That prompted Koubek, who had just hit a forehand long, to hit one even longer, all the way to the upper deck.

Safin served it out, 7-5, and said afterward, throwing diplomacy to the wind, “Just in the third set, when I was 3-0 down, I knew that I have a chance because he cannot play this type of game, you know, for a long time.”

In two other matches of note on the men’s first day, two former Grand Slam tournament winners, Richard Krajicek and Albert Costa, played two tiebreakers before Costa prevailed, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (4). Interestingly, was the clay-court specialist, 2002 French Open champion Costa, who sent a 123-mph ace past huge-serving Krajicek, the ’96 Wimbledon champion, on match point. Also, qualifier Vince Spadea upset 12th-seeded Paradorn Srichaphan of Thailand, 6-3, 6-4.

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Featured Matches

Pacifc Life Open being played at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden:

MEN’S FIRST ROUND

* No. 5 Carlos Moya, Spain, vs. Michael Chang.

* No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt, Australia, vs Younes El Aynaoui, Morroco.

* James Blake vs. Todd Martin.

* No. 6 Andy Roddick vs. Thomas Enqvist, Sweden.

* No. 13 Tim Henman, England, vs. Jan-Michael Gambill.

WOMEN’S FOURTH ROUND

* No. 3 Daniela Hantuchova, Slovakia, vs. No. 16 Amanda Coetzer, South Africa.

* No. 1 Kim Clijsters, Belgium, vs. No. 15 Nathalie Dechy, France.

* No. 21 Ai Sugiyama, Japan, vs. No. 8 Chanda Rubin.