Fabrice Santoro on two months of rough draws: "At French Open, I lost to Sampras first round. I went to Rosmalen, Chang first round. I went to Wimbledon, Medvedev first round... I arrive at the airport and I said I'm gonna call to know who I play first round and they say `you play Courier tomorrow.' I don't know what's going on with the ATP. Maybe they want me to retire."
Jim Courier on his problems with the chair umpire: "I got a warning for saying `you suck,' which is curious. I thought I could badger myself as long as I didn't use any curse words and I don't think `suck' is considered a curse word in any continent or any place. Then I got a point penalty for going like this (non-obscene hand wave) to the umpire, so you figure it out why I'm upset. I'm upset because there's a little bit of a discrepancy between the code there and I really don't understand that... I think there's a reason that I've never seen that umpire on the Center Court before. That's why, and I don't think that he should be out there anymore...they should put professionals on the Center Court matches."
Gustavo Kuerten on how his life has changed since winning the French Open -- "Not so much. I'm getting a little older, I guess."
What, did the singles qualifying run long? No, this all-American battle was part of the main draw, since Salzenstein (#3 seed in qualies) and McGuire (#5 seed) were lucky enough to draw each other in the first round. McGuire might be considered the Jim Courier of the sub-100 ranks -- similar service motion (but with a rather ugly hitch), similar hair, and similar need to grind matches out rather than breeze through with one big weapon. Salzenstein's service action resembles that of Mark Philippoussis. He may not be able to match the Scud's results yet, but the 23-year-old Denver native is having a good year. Having graduated from the challenger circuit, Salzenstein has been qualifying for a number of tournaments and accumulating enough points that he may not have to turn to the qualies and wild cards for much longer.
Salzenstein's ability was clear early in the match. He was dominant on his own serve and pretty adept at attacking his opponent's, chipping and charging to a 3-1 lead. McGuire would manage to squeak out service wins for the rest of the set, finding success by serving to the Salzenstein backhand (pretty clearly his weaker wing). The lanky lefty was untouchable when the ball was his, however. Salzenstein won his last 11 service points in the set, closing it out 6-4.
Things got no better for McGuire in set 2. He opened with a 40-30 lead, but handed his opponent a break with a double fault followed by two groundstroke errors. Salzenstein reeled off three straight games in quick fashion after that, leaving the match's outcome more or less a foregone conclusion. Leading 5-2 and 40-0, Salzenstein double faulted away his first match point. He followed it up with a service winner, though -- a fitting way to complete a 6-4, 6-2 win in which he never faced a break point. The athletic young American left the court with a big smile on his face, appearing poised to give second round opponent Thomas Muster a scare or two.
After startling success on clay and baffling failure on grass, Patrick Rafter returned to the hard court scene on Tuesday. The #12 seed showed no signs of the injury which forced him to pull out of the recent Washington event. Rafter dished out two aces in the opening game of the match -- the first of many bad moments for French veteran Olivier Delaitre. At age 30, he was the oldest player remaining in the singles draw. It certainly looked like he wouldn't be around much longer when, in the third game of the match, he barely tipped a Rafter serve. The ball bounced up and caught Delaitre in the eye, leaving him understandably shaken.
Impaired vision or not, Delaitre continued to hold serve. Rafter had the only break point in the first nine games of the match and failed to take advantage of it. However, he got three more when the umpire overruled a second serve against Delaitre, the result being a double fault and a 0-40 score. The diminutive Frenchman argued to no avail and promptly dropped the set 6-4 with an errant backhand.
Things only got worse for Delaitre. In the first game of the second set, Rafter hit a fault and Delaitre, swinging anyway, sent a return in the general direction of the chair umpire. This looked purely unintentional to me, but a code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct was ruled. A stunned Delaitre lashed out in his defense: "There's no way you can do that. No way you can do that. I'm playing the ball, I can't see anything, one eye is closed. No way you can do that. Just be quiet." The ruling stood and Rafter eventually fought off a break point to take a 1-0 lead. Delaitre continued to argue during the changeover, telling the umpire, among other things, "You don't know nothing" and "I have better eyes than you."
After being broken in the fourth game of the set and seeing (with the good eye) another call go against him, Delaitre rather flagrantly gave up. Rafter racked up three consecutive aces followed by a service winner to hold at love and lead 4-1. A few minutes later he served out a 6-4, 6-1 victory. Delaitre had some more choice words for the umpire when it was all over, but this still goes down in the books as an impressive win for Rafter, whose serve-and-volley game hummed along beautifully.
The last time these two met, a night match at the '95 US Open, Spadea streaked to an early lead and Kafelnikov more or less faded away, losing in straight sets. After about an hour of Tuesday's match, a repeat seemed to be in store. Spadea had a commanding 6-4, 3-1 lead on the #4 seed. Kafelnikov battled back this time, however, streaking to a 4-6, 6-3, 5-1 edge. Now you had to figure it would be the American making a hasty exit. Wrong again. Spadea refused to go quietly, both literally (as in an audible obscenity warning) and figuratively (as in scoring two huge breaks to even the third set at 5 games all).
Just when he seemed to have the momentum in his corner again, Spadea buckled. He missed a volley at 5-5, 15-30 and slammed his racquet to the court in frustration. Kafelnikov went on to break serve and get a third chance to serve for victory. He dug himself out of a 15-40 hole, smacking a nice volley to reach deuce, but was broken yet again when his reply to a Spadea passing shot went long. After two hours of play, Kafelnikov and Spadea embarked on a climactic tiebreak.
The tiebreak was hardly a great display of tennis. Two errors by Spadea put him down 2-0; a double fault and forehand error by Kafelnikov made it 2-2. More of the same made it 4-4. Spadea then missed a lob on the 9th point and the weak left-handed forehand he resorted to when Kafelnikov caught him out of position in the 10th point. Facing double match point, Spadea delivered the first clean winner of the tiebreak, a sizzling backhand pass down the line. Kafelnikov squandered a second match point with a service return into the net. Spadea put a shot of his own in the net, making it 7-6 Kafelnikov. The match finally came to an end on the next point, with a defensive lob by Spadea landing barely long.
The 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 win was probably much tougher than the Russian would have liked, but at least he kept his tournament hopes alive. There was no such consolation for Spadea, who violently kicked over his chair after match point. It has been a rough season for the once-promising American, who was a first round loser in 12 of his first 13 tournaments in '97. Having recovered from a back injury, Spadea appears to have his game more or less back on track, but even that knowledge probably can't alleviate the disappointment of this narrow defeat.
There's no question who the more popular team was in this match. The largely female contingent of Philippoussis/Rafter fans who crowded the front rows of Court 1 could attest to that. David Adams and Byron Talbot would not be willing victims, though. They surprisingly managed to send the first set to a tiebreak. Even more surprisingly, they managed to win that breaker. Four Philippoussis errors were the main culprit, although it was a service winner by Talbot which sealed the 7-4 win. The photogenic Australians would be in for a fight.
Talbot faced three break points in the third game of the second set, but otherwise both teams held easily to 3-3. Talbot once again got in trouble, down 15-40. This time a Rafter forehand skimmed the tape and landed for a winner, securing a break for a 4-3 lead. A lunging volley by Philippoussis two games later wrapped up a 6-3 win, leaving one set left for all the marbles. The Aussies nearly went up 2-0 in the third, but Philippoussis fell lunging for a shot on break point. The holds would continue to 3 all, despite Talbot facing three more break points along the way.
Philippoussis ended the seventh game with a typically awe-inspiring ace. Talbot then faced another deficit on serve, fighting back from 0-40 to deuce. However, Rafter killed a volley on the team's eight break point of the set, finally giving them a winning lead. They trailed 0-30 in the following game, but Rafter's solid serves led them to four straight points and a three set triumph: 6-7, 6-3, 6-3. Mark Philippoussis was visibly frustrated by his play in this one, but he and Rafter managed to squeak through to a second round date with Kelly Jones and T.J. Middleton.
Back on hard courts for the first time since March's Lipton Championships, "Guga" Kuerten could logically have been on the verge of an early upset loss in Montreal. Doubles specialist Stark made a case for that point of view in a commanding opening game which he ended with an ace. Kuerten quickly took over, however, with shots as flashy as his famous attire. Kuerten broke in the third and seventh games, then finished the 6-2 frame with back-to-back aces. The pride of Brazil was already up one set to love after just 27 minutes, having not lost a single point on his first serve.
Stark stuck to his serve-and-volley approach, but continued to flounder against Kuerten's formidable returns. A double fault from the American meant a 2-1 lead for Kuerten. The reigning French Open champ faced two break points in the following game, but fought them off for 3-1. Two easy holds later it was 4-2, the sixth game ending as Kuerten ran down a tough net cord and flipped it back for a feathery winner. A big backhand return at 30-40 in the following game added another break to the coffers, allowing Kuerten to serve for the match at 5-2. Stark responded with inspired play, procuring a break and a quick hold to reach 5-4. Kuerten did not let his second opportunity to serve out the win slip away. He held at love, putting exclamation points on the win with an ace and a winning forehand volley.
The crowd roared in approval after match point, as it had through much of both sets. The quietly charismatic Kuerten obviously has a big following already in Montreal, where having won a French Open counts for a lot. I asked Gustavo about his brief appearance at Stark's first round match and he confirmed that it was a scouting mission: "Yeah, I had seen him a lot and I saw some games yesterday, but I knew that he was a serve-and-volley player and I knew that he wouldn't change for me."
I'm choosing to think of Tuesday's night session at the du Maurier Open as "Fan Appreciation Night". The crowds were treated to both Sebastien Lareau (a hometown favorite) and Gustavo Kuerten (already embraced like a Montreal native). Then, to top it of, they got a helping of the sport's ultimate fan-friendly circus act, the Jensen brothers. However, Luke and Murphy want to do more than clown around these days. After losing points left and right, the Jensens were in frequent need of wild cards. They had to rededicate themselves to winning matches, even if it meant appearing in a few challenger events. The work has paid off, with the wacky duo climbing to #13 in the ATP Tour doubles team rankings.
So the Jensens came ready to entertain and compete on this night. They were more successful with the former early on, making a bigger impression with their matching light blue outfits than with their tennis. They hit balls into the crowd, tossed racquets high into the sky, and wandered all the way around the net on a couple changeovers, but lost the opening set 6-2. The crowd wanted a comeback and got one. Luke bellowed "Yeah!" after he and his brother earned a service break for a 2-0 lead -- they celebrated with a chest bump which turned into a head butt. Pumped fists accompanied another successful game for a 4-1 second set advantage.
Olivier Delaitre's tough day with officials continued, as two of his serves in the sixth game were ruled faults by the chair umpire. Nonetheless, he and Santoro held and then broke Luke's serve on a nifty backhand half-volley by Fabrice. The Jensens broke right back, though, with a Luke backhand at 30-40 sending Delaitre sprawling. Murphy rounded out the 6-3 set with an ace. The crowd had thinned a bit by this juncture, but those who stayed remained enthusiastic. Cries of "use the force, Luke!" rained down from the stands early in the third set.
Leading 2-1 in the final set, Santoro hit a shot which accidentally caught a nearby ball girl. Luke rushed over to help the injured girl, as did Fabrice. The ensuing delay may have taken "Dual Hand" out of his rhythm -- a series of poor Luke Jensen serves led to Delaitre scoring a break with a passing shot up the middle. A love hold put the French pair up 4-1. The Jensens had to rally from 15-40 just to cut the margin to 4-2. The seventh game ended poorly for them, as a stab volley by Luke was called out on an overrule by the chair umpire.
Santoro and Delaitre saved a number of would-be winners in the next game, but eventually lost it on a service winner by Luke. They picked right up where they left off, though. Serving for the match at 5-3, Delaitre/Santoro sprinted to a 40-0 lead. The crowd did its best to spur on their beloved Jensens with a big ovation, but Murphy returned a serve into the net and brought the 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 loss to an end. The Jensens once again put on a show, but its Montreal incarnation closed after just one performance.
Earlier in the evening, I asked Santoro if he was looking forward to this bout with the Jensens. His deadpan reply: "I don't care. They are making me play at 10 tonight; I don't know what I did to the referee, but...it would be 4 am for me in Paris. I feel bad for my partner." Judging by the upset victory which followed, perhaps Fabrice should carry that kind of woeful outlook into every match!