Pierce Good Till Last Sweep

Send in the flowers.

It wasn’t a good sign for Ai Sugiyama of Japan when the cute youngsters moved into position just to the left of the press section. Hair combed, pony tails adjusted and bouquets were in hand to get ready for the on-court ceremony.

But this wasn’t with one or two games remaining. It was unusually early -- just before the fourth game of the second set in the final of the Acura Classic on Sunday.

Cold?

Not exactly. Not when Mary Pierce of France won the first set, at love, in 21 minutes en route to a 6-0, 6-3 victory. Not when Sugiyama already looked as though she was running on fumes, winning only two points on her serve in the opening set, let alone being able to hold.

Quite simply, Sugiyama had had it.

Still, there was the matter of the finish. The only problem the sixth-seeded Pierce had was just before the finish line. It wasn’t quite like the French Open, when she needed 11 match points to defeat Patty Schnyder, but it was drifting dangerously toward that bizarre territory.

Pierce did it on match point No. 7, hitting an ace to complete her 1-hour 15-minute triumph over Sugiyama at La Costa Resort and Spa, winning her first U.S. hard-court title, at age 30.

First, though, a word or two about match point No. 6. Sugiyama was doing her best at scrambling, and put up a high, difficult lob, which Pierce handled successfully. But Sugiyama lunged and lofted up another lob, albeit a very short one.

Game, set and match?

Well ... not quite. Pierce, close to the net, whiffed on it, stunning the sellout crowd of 6,500. Both players laughed, a far better option than crying. Ninety-nine times out of 100, Pierce will make that shot. In fact, she couldn’t remember doing it in practice, much less a match.

“I don’t know how, well ... oh I do know how I missed that,” Pierce said in the interview room. “That was a first for me. Got a little tight at the end there and closing it out got tough. I had already lost a few match points and I’m like, ‘OK, now you couldn’t have asked for an easier shot to put away the match.’ What can you do? You just have to laugh.”

It was a final between two resurgent 30-year-olds. Though Sugiyama had won six of their previous 10 matches, she had a few more miles on her by Sunday, having played until almost midnight Saturday, winning her singles semifinal and needing three sets in the following doubles semifinal.

Playing with her left thigh wrapped, she lost 11 of the first 12 games, needing assistance from the tour trainer after the third game of the second set to treat a split toenail on her right big toe.

“She just played so great,” said Sugiyama, who should be ranked No. 26 today when the weekly rankings are released by the WTA Tour. “So aggressively, every point was tough for me because she was all over every ball. To be honest, it was tough because I finished late last night after two matches.

“In the second set, I raised my game and was moving better and playing it point by point, but she was still too good. She was serving so well and I don’t think I was serving that well.”

This was Pierce’s first title in more than a year, and she has won 16 of her last 18 matches. The only players to defeat her in that stretch were Justine Henin-Hardenne in the French Open final and Venus Williams in the Wimbledon quarterfinals.

She is expected to be ranked No. 11 today, an impressive comeback considering her long list of injuries after a French Open title in 2000. Pierce had dropped to No. 130 in the world at the end of 2001.

“You just do a lot of searching and thinking of what you’re going to do,” she said. “I didn’t know if I was going to physically be able to play again. I felt I still had some great tennis left in me -- ‘You’re not done yet. There’s still some things to accomplish.’

“What they were, I didn’t know exactly. I knew I just needed to get fit and in good shape because my game is a very physical game.”

Pierce said she planned on celebrating with a nice dinner and maybe a glass of red wine. She laughed long and hard when the topic of her new automobile came up and whether it should go to her coach and brother, David. The winner here receives $189,000 and an Acura RL.

“Actually, my whole family is going to be fighting over this one,” Pierce said. “I think I want it. It’ll be my car. This car is special for me.”