Sampras Gets Past Woodforde

MELBOURNE, Australia —  Pete Sampras, determined to avoid becoming a third-round upset victim for the second consecutive year, needed only 79 minutes to eliminate Australia’s Mark Woodforde, 6-1, 6-0, 6-1, Saturday night at the Australian Open.

Things didn’t go so well for No. 2-ranked Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, who was sent packing on the same court a couple of hours earlier by Belgium’s Dominique van Roost, 1-6, 6-4, 8-6.

Sampras said it was his loss to Australian Mark Philippoussis last year that motivated him for his match against Woodforde.

“Playing a night match here against an Aussie, I came out prepared and ready to go,” the top-seeded Sampras said. “I played a great match and everything was really clicking. You just wish you had days like this all the time. I played pretty much faultless tennis.”

Woodforde agreed.

“I think I’ve got to really thank Mark Philippoussis for Pete playing so well tonight, because [Sampras] got his butt kicked last year by Scud,” Woodforde said. “I guess he didn’t want the same thing happening--same crowd, same night, same round.”

Sampras could hardly have played better as he won 13 consecutive games in one stretch, yielding onlyt 17 points along the way, between the service Woodforde held in the first set and the one he held in the third set.

Though Sampras served only six aces, he kept Woodforde lunging left and right to return balls, and easily erased the only break point he faced the entire match.

Sampras got some special satisfaction from his last shot. Serving for the match, he led 40-0, when razzing shouts from the crowd during his serves rattled him and led to his second and third double-faults. Sampras glared at the boorish fans, served once more for the match, and got into a brief rally. When Woodforde tried a lob, Sampras soared about three feet off the ground and hammered an overhead crosscourt into the corner to close out the match.

Sampras turned to the fans who had been heckling him, gave them a “take that” look, and pumped his fist in triumph.

Sampras next faces No. 76 Dominik Hrbaty, at 19 the youngest player in the top 100, the youngest man left in the tournament, and the same age Philippoussis was last year.

In late afternoon matches, No. 3 Goran Ivanisevic served 26 aces to beat Chris Woodruff, 6-3, 6-7 (7-5), 6-3, 6-1, and 11th-seeded, two-time champion Jim Courier ended his string of five consecutive five-set matches at the Australian the past two years with a 6-1, 7-6 (7-3), 6-3 victory over Jeff Tarango.

The youngest woman left in the tournament, No. 4 Martina Hingis, had no trouble with Barbara Schett, winning, 6-2, 6-1. With Sanchez Vicario’s loss, the highest-seeded player Hingis could face before the final is No. 8 Irina Spirlea of Romania.

Sanchez Vicario, who squandered a 5-2 lead in the third set against van Roost, hadn’t lost so early in a major since bowing out of Wimbledon in the second round in 1992. A finalist in the Australian Open in 1994 and 1995, she lost in the quarterfinals last year.

But for a player who has consistently been among the best in women’s tennis, a winner of the 1994 U.S. Open and the 1994 and 1989 French Opens, Sanchez Vicario has been distinctly unimpressive in recent months.

After reaching the finals of the French, Wimbledon and the Olympics last summer, she lost in the fourth round of the U.S. Open and the quarterfinals of the last three tournaments she played in 1996.

Van Roost, 23, had won only two small WTA tournaments in six years on the tour and had gone as far as the fourth round of a major just once, in the 1992 Australian Open.

Dusting the lines with two-handed backhands and putting pressure on Sanchez Vicario by attacking her at the net in a third-set comeback, van Roost played the finest match of her career for her biggest victory.