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| | Wednesday, January 19 | |||||
| Results
MELBOURNE, Australia -- Amelie Mauresmo crashed from a dream week to a nightmare exit at the Australian Open. Mauresmo, a finalist a year ago and a victor over three of the top five players in a tournament title run last week, succumbed to her own wildness and the wily tactics of left-hander Patty Schnyder 6-4, 6-4 in the second round Wednesday.
Jennifer Capriati, the 1992 Olympic champion, rebounded from a game with four consecutive double-faults and outslugged No. 14 Dominique Van Roost 6-1, 4-6, 8-6. Capriati broke in the final set's first game, but then lost the sixth game from 40-0 with the string of double-faults and an errant backhand. She finished with 10 double-faults, while Van Roost had 11. After three consecutive service breaks starting in the 11th game, Capriati finally served out the match, ending with an ace. Among the other seeded women, No. Lindsay Davenport, No. 4 Mary Pierce, No. 8 Amanda Coetzer, No. 9 Julie Halard-Decugis, and No. 11 Anna Kournikova advanced. No. 5 Nathalie Tauziat, playing her last Australian Open, lost to qualifier Sonya Jeyaseelan 7-6 (3), 6-4. Mauresmo, the seventh seed from France, had trouble with Schnyder's heavy topspin and occasional drop shots, committed 48 unforced errors and suffered one disastrous game in each set. In the first set's ninth game, she started with two double-faults and lost her serve at love. In the second set's third game, Mauresmo again lost her serve at love on two volley errors, a forehand into the net and a double-fault. A week earlier, in a warmup tournament in Sydney, Mauresmo beat Pierce, No. 1 Martina Hingis and Davenport on her way to the title. That earned her the No. 6 ranking, her highest ever. "It's different for me to come in as a favorite, it's difficult, but it's something I might have to get used to," Mauresmo said. Last year, ranked No. 29, she became the lowest-ranked player since 1979 to reach the Australian Open final, where she lost to Hingis. She beat Schnyder in the second round and Davenport in the semifinal. Serving for the match this time, Schnyder started with a double-fault, recovered to 30-15, then dumped a nervous forehand into the net for 30-all. But she set up match-point with her third ace and finished by following up a good serve with a forehand winner down the line. The 21-year-old Swiss player, named the WTA Tour's most improved player of 1998, rose as high as No. 8 last year before sliding to No. 41. Mauresmo's loss was the biggest upset so far in the women's draw, though No. 3 Serena Williams nearly preceded her. Looking lost, worried and terribly tired, Williams turned to her mother in the stands as if seeking a shoulder to lean on. Oracene Williams could do no more than stare back glumly and helplessly, her chin on her hands. They had flown 20 hours from Florida to the Australian Open, arriving jet-lagged just four days before Tuesday night's first-round match. Serena hadn't played a match in three months, her back hurt from a lingering injury and her legs felt dead. And now an unknown, an Australian wild card playing in her first major tournament, No. 261 Amanda Grahame, stood across the net -- two games from sending the U.S. Open champion and her mother/coach right back home. Somehow, the third-seeded Williams summoned the strength to serve out the next game at love, then break Grahame on the third match-point to win 6-4, 4-6, 6-4. It was a two-hour test of endurance and will that began in muggy heat and ended, after a half-hour rain delay in the second set, under the center court's retractable roof. "I can't picture myself losing until the last point is over and I'm shaking her hand, thinking, 'I can't believe it,"' the 18-year-old Williams said. "She played well and she thought she was going to win at 4-4. I have that never-say-die spirit. It's just innate, and I'm glad I had it. You can't buy it." She needed every bit of that spirit to avoid her first opening-round exit from a major. Williams, wearing a bright ketchup-red dress and matching shoes, made 57 varieties of mistakes to put herself in position to lose. Her first mistake was flying into Australia more than a week after all the other top players. "Maybe I should have played a warmup or maybe I should have come here earlier," she conceded. Her second mistake were those red sneakers, an eye-popping target for linesmen who called eight foot-faults against her. "I'm not giving up the red shoes," she insisted. "I'm just going to move back." Then there were her 55 unforced errors -- an assortment of wildly slapped volleys and groundstrokes sprayed wide and long and into the net. "It was really out of control the way I played today," she said. "I can't say that because I was off for three months -- that gives me an excuse. There was no excuse for the way I played today, really." Then, checking her watch, she thought of one pretty good excuse when told that her mother thought she looked jet-lagged and sluggish. "Usually my legs don't work after 4 o'clock in the morning, in my time (zone), and it's now 7 o'clock," she said. "They usually get started back around 8 o'clock, so they should be working in about 55 minutes." Perhaps the best explanation for why Williams struggled lay in the inspired play of Grahame, a slender 20-year-old left-hander who served at up to 110 mph and played fearlessly from start to finish. Williams knew nothing about Grahame -- "I really wouldn't have been able to recognize her if she was standing right in front of me," she said -- but found out quickly enough more than she wanted to know. No left-hander she had ever faced served so well, taking her off the court with angled serves in the corner on the ad side and producing five aces. Those serves, and Grahame's poised play, helped her fend off a dozen of the 17 break points Williams held in the match. | ALSO SEE Focused Capriati grinds out another victory Dokic's reaction to first-round loss stuns rest of field Agassi, Sampras seem destined to meet Down Under Hingis impresses, Serena struggles Down Under Davenport criticizes Aussie Open for its unequal pay Venus Williams withdraws from Australian Open Injury forces Seles out of Aussie Open AUDIO/VIDEO   Serena Williams defeats Amanda Grahame 6-4, 4-6, 6-4.avi: 744 k RealVideo: 56.6 | ISDN | T1  | |||||
