By Stephen Wilson, Associated Press writer
June 5, 1996
PARIS -- After five sets and 31/2 hours of bruising power tennis against old sparring partner Jim Courier, Pete Sampras looked like he could barely stand up.
Then he banged his 28th ace, capping an emotional and exhausting comeback from two sets down Tuesday to reach the semifinals of the French Open for the first time.
After the ball whizzed past Courier to complete the 6-7 (7-4), 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 victory, the top-seeded Sampras looked to the sky and held up his arms like a boxer signaling a knockout.
"I was very tired," Sampras said. "In the last set, my mind was kind of a blank. It was just adrenaline ... just trying to guts it out."
There was no such reprieve for Monica Seles, who was ousted by 10th-seeded Jana Novotna 7-6 (9-7) 6-3. Seles, a three-time champion who shares the top seeding with Steffi Graf, was unusually tentative.
"I just played very scared," said Seles, playing in her first French Open since her stabbing in 1993. "I played really defensive which is not the style of my game."
Seles had reached the finals of last 10 Grand Slam tournaments she had played in and won 25 consecutive French Open matches.
It was also the first time since 1989 that Seles lost at the French Open. That was the year she lost to Steffi Graf in the semifinals. Seles won in 1990, 1991 and 1992 before missing the next three years.
Novotna sensed a different Seles across the net from the one who ruled women's tennis in the early 1990s.
"At the important moments, she was not as dominant as she used to be," said Novotna, the No. 9 seed from the Czech Republic who had lost her last four matches to Seles.
Graf, the defending champion, swept past No. 5 Iva Majoli 6-3, 6-1. Also advancing to the women's semis were No. 3 Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, who was jeered while resorting to moonballs in her 6-1, 6-7 (7-4), 10-8 victory over Karina Habsudova; and No. 3 Conchita Martinez, a 6-1, 6-3 winner over No. 9 Lindsay Davenport.
In Thursday's semifinals, Graf will face Martinez and Sanchez Vicario will play Novotna.
Courier, who lost to Sampras for the 15th time in 18 matches, said he had seen it all before.
"Pete's a good actor, let's put it that way," he said. "Some people put up a front that they're tough. Pete puts up a front that he's hurting, but he still seems to fire those aces.
"You play for 3, 31/2 hours and you've got the guy by the neck the whole time and he just keeps firing. I must be missing something. My eyes are deceiving me if he can keep playing at that level looking like's he's looking. I swear I'm not blind.
"You know he's tired, but it doesn't really matter because he's got a great heart. He really has a very strong heart and he's going to leave it on the court."
The match followed the same pattern of Sampras' epic win over Courier in the 1995 Australian Open quarterfinals. Then, Sampras was down two sets to love and won in five, crying during the match because his coach Tim Gullikson had been diagnosed with brain cancer.
Gullikson died last month, and Sampras seems clearly intent on winning the French -- the only Grand Slam tournament to elude him -- in his coach's memory.
"It's too tough to talk about," Sampras said, choking up during a television interview.
"Certainly a lot of different thoughts were in my mind, good ones and some sad ones," he said later, describing his emotions at the end of the match. "I fought hard and that's really what people around me can be proud of."
The win represented another clay-court breakthrough for Sampras, who beat another former two-time French Open champion -- Sergi Bruguera -- in the third round.
"I don't know if I really believed I could win these matches in the past against the Brugueras and Couriers," Sampras said. "Now I'm going out there, believing that I can."
Sampras will next face No. 6 seed Yevgeny Kafelnikov, the hard-hitting Russian who beat No. 13 Richard Krajicek 6-3, 6-4, 6-7 (7-4), 6-2.
Courier, who won the French Open in 1991 and 1992, beat Sampras in the quarterfinals in Paris two years ago in their only previous meeting on clay.
But, even though he was down two sets Tuesday, Sampras did not fold the way he might have in the past on his least favorite surface.
"It was one of those matches where I wasn't going to give it to him," he said. "I wasn't going to back down and go into the locker room quite so soon."
Recalling the Australian Open comeback, he said, "I did it once before and, even though it's on clay, I can do it again."
The crucial game of the match came with Courier leading 4-3 on serve in the fourth set. With Sampras down 0-30, Courier had a sitter but slammed the forehand long.
"If he would have converted there, he probably would have gone on and served it out," Sampras said.
But the game had even more suspense. At 15-40, Sampras saved the first break point with an ace down the middle (his 23rd). Then on the next point, he broke a string on his first serve fault. Sampras took out a new racket and hit a second serve that clipped the corner for another ace.
"It was a little luck involved, I must admit," he said.
Said Courier: "That game pretty much sums it up. I had it. Everything looked like it was going to go my way, and it just didn't."
In the final set, Sampras took command by breaking in the third game. In the next game, Courier got so frustrated he ripped off his white cap and slammed it away with his racket, playing the rest of the match capless.
Serving for the match, Sampras went up 40-0. Courier saved one match point. As Sampras prepared to serve again, Courier stalked to the back of the court muttering that he was taking too much time. Sampras promptly drilled the final ace.
"My serve just kind of won it for me," Sampras said. "At the end I got a lot of free points."
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June 5, 1996
SLAM! - FRENCH OPEN NOTEBOOK
PETE THE GREAT: Pete Sampras' come-from-behind five-set victory Tuesday over Jim Courier was hailed by the French press as an epic performance.
"Great like Sampras" was the front-page headline in L'Equipe, which described his win as "phenomenal, grandiose, gigantic, out-of-this world .... simply prodigious."
L'Equipe said the guts and determination Sampras showed in coming back from two sets down ensured his place as a tennis legend.
"Besides his talent as a player, Pete Sampras, the man, is one of the greatest champions that tennis has ever known," the paper said.