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 Pete's 600th win Sampras makes short work of Safin; Williams boogies past Pierce
Posted: Monday September 07, 1998 11:23 PM
NEW YORK (AP) -- Pete Sampras strolled off the court after overpowering yet another young challenger. Venus Williams strutted in victory, pumping up the crowd with an on-court dance that looked like an NFL end zone celebration. On a Monday when thunderstorms turned the U.S. Open into Wimbledon West, Sampras and Williams reached the quarterfinals with convincing wins over dangerous opponents. But Andre Agassi was struggling to avoid elimination in a match against Karol Kucera in which Agassi mocked his opponent and the players postured at each other across the net. Kucera was up two sets to one when rain halted play for the night. Agassi, who had complained that Kucera was stalling by practicing his service toss before hitting serves, began mimicking Kucera's practice tosses. The two then exchanged moonballs, lofting soft shots back and forth. Kucera led 6-3, 6-3, 6-7 (5-7), 0-3 when play was stopped. It was the second rain delay of the match, which will resume Tuesday afternoon. Sampras had 18 aces and never lost his serve in a 6-4, 6-3, 6-2 win that included a 2 1/4-hour rain break, turning his power lunch with Marat Safin into a late-afternoon snack for the world's top player. "I was cracking it pretty hard throughout the match," Sampras said. "I got the serve going, which has been a little bit up and down throughout this past week. Today it seemed like it clicked." The top-seeded Sampras, a four-time U.S. Open champion, next will face the winner of the match between No. 8 Agassi and No. 9 Kucera. Williams won the final six points of the tiebreaker in her 6-1, 7-6 (7-4) win over No. 12 Mary Pierce, celebrating her win by shimmying to the net.
"I really shouldn't have done the dance, I should have waited until later," she said. "I didn't plan to do the dance. I planned to win the second set really easy." Williams' quarterfinal opponent will be No. 4 Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, who won 7-6 (7-5), 6-3 over No. 15 Anna Kournikova. Also advancing to the quarterfinals was No. 2 Lindsay Davenport, who won 6-1, 6-4 over No. 10 Nathalie Tauziat and next will play Amanda Coetzer. Sampras lost only 20 points on his serve in the match and closed out his 600th career win with three consecutive aces -- including one at 135 mph. He won 41 of 48 points on his first serve in the match. Safin, 18, who wowed crowds at this year's French Open with a string of upsets en route to the fourth round in his Grand Slam debut, showed off plenty of power, including 10 aces. But he was no match for the steady Sampras. "He's very talented, but also very young. The first set I couldn't believe the pace of his serve, I really had a hard time reading it. The talent is there, maybe he just needs to tone it down a little bit," Sampras said. "He's 18 years old and he's got plenty of years to learn from mistakes. My game at 18 was pretty bad." Sampras was 19 when he won the U.S. Open for the first time. Williams took advantage of 19 unforced errors and two double faults to win the first set in 24 minutes against Pierce, who twice had her wrist treated by a trainer. Pierce was down a break in the second set when rain interrupted play. Pierce was a different player after the break, and so was Williams -- who had 31 unforced errors in the second set, as compared to just two in the first set. The second set lasted 1 hour, 11 minutes.
The second set was tied 5-5 when Williams and Pierce played the game of the match. It lasted 13 minutes, 57 seconds and ended when Williams converted her seventh break point to take a 6-5 lead. Pierce broke right back and took a 4-1 lead in the tiebreaker, but didn't get another point in the match. Already overshadowed by Mark McGwire's chase for the home-run record, the tournament almost had its Labor Day showcase washed away as thunderstorms and strong winds gave the courts all the charm of a car wash. With tornadoes touching down nearby, players were forced off the courts as the sky turned pitch black in mid-afternoon. By the time they returned, the temperature had dropped 22 degrees -- from 89 to 67. "It was a scary sight, it was like green out there," Sampras said of the stormy sky. "Maybe it was going to rain money." The rain returned at night, delaying some matches by an additional half hour and then eventually wiping out play until Tuesday. The first batch of bad weather came just after the day's biggest sports moment, McGwire's 61st homer in St. Louis. The feat was not announced to the tennis crowd, although a big roar could be heard from Shea Stadium across the subway tracks, where the Mets were playing Atlanta. The only singles match completed before the afternoon rain was a marathon fourth-round women's contest in which No. 13 Coetzer slammed a backhand passing shot down the line on match point to win 6-4, 4-6, 6-2 over No. 7 Conchita Martinez. With Coetzer and Martinez engaging in long baseline rallies and occasionally hitting moonballs, the match lasted 2 hours, 39 minutes. One game had 28 points, including 11 deuces, and consumed more than 20 minutes. The second set alone, at 1:16, was only one minute shorter than the entire Sampras-Safin match.
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