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 No cakewalk Sampras gets tough first-round draw at Wimbledon
Posted: Tuesday June 15, 1999 09:34 AM
WIMBLEDON, England (AP) -- Five-time champion Pete Sampras will start his defense of the Wimbledon title against Australia's Scott Draper and is scheduled to meet another big-serving Australian, Mark Philippoussis, in the quarterfinal. It's a tough start for Sampras, who is seeded No. 1 after regaining the top world ranking. He faces the player he succeeded as champion at Queen's Club, the pre-Wimbledon grass-court championship which Draper won last year. Sampras does avoid two-time U.S. Open champion Pat Rafter, last season's Wimbledon runner-up Goran Ivanisevic, 1996 titlist Richard Krajicek and newly crowned French Open champion Andre Agassi until the final. They are in the other half of the draw. After a rocky first five months in 1999, he also appears to be returning to some kind of form after winning at Queen's Club on Sunday by beating Britain's Tim Henman in a close, three-set final. Defending women's champion Jana Novotna, who is seeded fifth, has a much easier first round draw than Sampras. She faces Shi-ting Wang of Taiwan while top seed and world No. 1 Martina Hingis will meet one of the qualifiers. The qualifying rounds are taking place this week. Seven-time titlist Steffi Graf, who is seeded No. 2 and beat Hingis in the final of the French Open 10 days ago, meets Slovakia's Ludmila Cervanova, ranked 100 in the world. Lindsay Davenport, seeded three, meets Alexandra Fusai of France while the two Williams sisters, Venus and Serena are scheduled to meet in the fourth round. In the men's draw, second seed Rafter and Ivanisevic, 10th, meet qualifiers. Krajicek, seeded five, meets Christian Ruud of Norway and fourth-seeded Agassi faces Romania's Andrei Pavel. Three-time champion Boris Becker, who plays tennis on a part-time basis these days and will make this his last Wimbledon, faces Britain's Miles Maclagan. One of the first seeds to go could be Britain's Greg Rusedski, seeded 9th, who faces Jason Stoltenberg, a semifinalist in 1996. Potential quarterfinals are Sampras-Philippoussis, Kafelnikov-Henman, Krajicek-Agassi and Todd Martin-Rafter. On the women's side it could be Hingis vs. Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, Davenport-Novotna, Nthalie Tauziat-Monica Seles and Venus Williams-Graf. The highlights of the women's first round are Jennifer Capriati against Anke Huber and Anna Kournikova, ranked 18 and unseeded, against No. 16 seed Dominique Van Roost of Belgium. Kournikova had to pull out past year with a thumb injury.
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