Dent Sends Safin Home Early

It will be written that the demons that have haunted Marat Safin for years in the Pacific Life Open tennis tournament popped up again Tuesday night, as he made his usual early departure. In fact, what popped up was the temporary reincarnation of Boris Becker.

Only this boom-boom, serve-and-volley player was a Southern California kid named Taylor Dent, the pride of Newport Beach, whose high-risk game paid the ultimate dividend on Center Court, a 7-5, 6-4 shocker over the fourth-seeded Australian Open champion.

In an age of tennis where the practice of following the serve to the net has become low percentage, as more tournaments are played on slower courts, more baseline bangers beget carbon copies and players spend hours working on passing shots and minutes on volleying, the day of the true serve-and-volley player is mostly a memory.

That makes Dent’s devotion to it more exceptional.

Afterward, Safin, a colorful Russian who has been the only player this year to beat the unbeatable Roger Federer, doing so in the semifinals at the Australian, said he lost because “I played the worst match I ever played, maybe in my entire career.”

He also said he felt like “I wasn’t even there,” and said that most frustrating was that he wasn’t even winning points from the baseline. “That says a lot, because, from there, I am better than him.”

All true, but what he didn’t say was that that is how an effective serve-and-volley player makes you feel -- like you aren’t there. Becker did it better than almost anybody. Stefan Edberg was a little slicker, relying less on a big serve and more on serving and volleying angles. Pete Sampras could do it at will, but didn’t live and die with it like Becker, Edberg and Richard Krajicek.

Dent, 23, at 6-foot-2 and 195 pounds, is a throwback, a Becker big-banger. Of course, to be a Becker or a Safin, he is several major titles shy, and he knows it.

“I can’t really compare my career to Safin’s yet,” he said. “He’s had an unbelievable career. I think 99% of the players out there would take his two Slams and all the titles he’s won.”

However, a lot fewer than 99% of the players out there would be willing to take Safin’s record at Indian Wells, where he has a 9-6 record and has never advanced past the fourth round.

“Today, I couldn’t put two balls in the court,” he said, “and it’s really frustrating that it happens, especially here in Indian Wells, at a Tennis Masters Series event.”

Safin finished the match with the ultimate frustration, a double fault.

He had begun by losing the first three games, then breaking to get back to 3-3, then 5-5. With Dent serving, Safin, despite playing the “worst match of his career,” had three shots at the set with three break points. He converted none of those, especially the one where Dent threw a 136-mph first serve at him. Then Dent broke him in the next game, when he won an exchange of drop shots, and suddenly, the No. 4 player in the world was down a set.

In the second set, Dent’s serve continued to contribute to the “worst match” of Safin’s career by starting with a hold at love, finishing out one game with a 131-mph ace and never facing a break point. Safin, on the other hand, had to save five break points at 1-2, two more at 2-3 and even got lucky at 4-5 when a double fault at 15-all wasn’t called and he won the point. But soon, he hit a backhand wide, and Dent was at match point.

And when Safin’s second serve missed well long, the handful of serve-and-volley players left in the game nodded, because one of them had had a moment, brief as they are these days. One statistic told all: When he got his first serve in, Dent won all but one of the points.

At one point in his press conference, while describing what went right, Dent said that he was “sticking” his volley. But he didn’t just say it, he gestured a well-hit, backhand volley with his arm. In his press conferences, Becker often did the same thing.

In addition to the Dent upset, Tuesday’s play produced a marquee round-of-16 match. Federer, in total control as usual, stopped Gilles Muller of Luxembourg, 6-3, 6-2, and will play Croatian Davis Cup hero Ivan Ljubicic, who beat the Czech Republic’s Tomas Berdych, 6-4, 6-1.

Ljubicic has lost three times to Federer this year, all in finals, the last two in tough three-setters. They will put that match on Center Court on Wednesday, starting no sooner than 8:30 p.m.

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Featured Matches

Today at the Pacific Life Open at Indian Wells Tennis Garden:

STADIUM COURT, starting at 10 a.m.

* David Nalbandian (Argentina) vs. Nicolas Kiefer (Germany)

* Svetlana Kuznetsova (Russia) vs. Elena Dementieva (Russia)

* Fernando Gonzalez (Chile) vs. Andy Roddick

* Guillermo Coria (Argentina) vs. Andre Agassi

Not before 7 p.m.

* Conchita Martinez (Spain) vs Kim Clijsters (Belgium)

* Roger Federer (Switzerland) vs Ivan Ljubicic (Croatia)