Henman Charging in Basel; Safin Out in First Round in Russia; Dent Ousts (2)Schalken in Stockholm; Dokic Upsets (5)Daniela "The Walking Stick" Hantuchova in Linz

Posted on October 23, 2003

ATP REVIEW/PREVIEW
Unseeded Tim Henman showed he is slowly coming back to form and shedding his girlie serve, in Basel Tuesday ousting (7)Verkerk easily in straight sets. "It's great for my confidence to play a Top 20 guy and win easily," said the pasty Brit. "I still believe that my best tennis can be ahead of me. It's no doubt if I can play a full calendar I can be where I was." The two other seeds in action advanced in (2)Federer (d. Swiss D-Cup captain Rosset easily) and (5)Novak (d. (Q)Parmar 6-0 in the third). James Blake nightmare post-US Open season continued with a first round loss to German "D"-squad player Tomas Behrend for his third consecutive first round loss. Mark Philippoussis pulled from the event Tuesday with a viral/chest infection.

Marat Safin is head case a-plenty since returning to the tour after time off with injury, and it showed again Tuesday in St. Petersburg when the No. 8 seed won the first set off Fernando Vicente before failing to put the foot down and dropping the next two. "The biggest problem for me is that I don't have any confidence in my game at the moment," said Safin, who is pretty much mentally tanking the rest of 2003. "I can't do much this year anymore, so I just look forward to a new season and hope things will be different for me then." The three other seeds in action advanced in defending champ (2)Grosjean (d. Koubek in three), (3)Kuerten (d. Vahaly), and (6)Spadea (d. Davydenko in three). "It's really important to play well," said the diminutive Grosjean, summing up the philosophy of winning tennis in one easy sentence. "I have a small chance to get to Houston (Masters Cup). So I have to do well here and especially in Paris." Wildcard Alex Corretja also picked up a rare win, beating qualifier Jan Vacek.

The seeds put in a poor 1-3 effort in Stockholm Tuesday, led by (2)Schalken (l. to Dent, nice draw), (7)Ferreira (l. to Chela), and (8)Nieminen (l. to Carraz in three). No. 5 seed Mardy Fish bucked the trend and pushed through to the second round with a win over (Q)Baccanello of Australia. Swedish wildcards went 2-0 with (WC)J.Johansson (d. (Q)Anderson) and (WC)Enqvist (d. Arazi) into the second round. "I started off a little slow, but then I felt like I was playing pretty well from 0-2 to 7-5 in the set," Enqvist said. "It always feels special to play in the Royal Tennis Hall [Kungliga Tennishallen], especially since I've won here three times. I've played some good matches this year but I haven't been able to follow them up."

Today's Matches:
St. Petersburg -- (4)Mirnyi vs. (WC)Andreev in an all-Eastern Bloc, (1)Schuettler vs. (Q)Lisnard (Lisnard leads 2-1), Kiefer vs. Kafelnikov in a veteran classic (Y-Man leads 8-6), (7)Gaudio vs. (WC)Corretja in a clay-on-indoor (Spaniard leads 5-1), and (6)Spadea vs. Hrbaty (The Dominator leads 2-0).

Basel -- Rafael "The Prodigy" Nadal vs. Lopez in an all-Spanish first meeting, (WC)Kratochvil vs. (8)Robredo (Swiss leads 1-0), (4)Nalbandian vs. Ramirez-Hildago, (1)Roddick vs. (Q)Scherrer, Santoro vs. (3)Coria in an all-wizard match-up (Frenchman leads 1-0), Volandri vs. Ljubicic, and O.Rochus vs. Mantilla.

Stockholm -- (5)Fish vs. (Q)Benneteau, (1)Srichaphan vs. van Lottum, (4)Gonzalez vs. (WC)J.Johansson, Vinciguerra vs. Bjorkman in an all-Swedish, "Everybody Loves" Raemon Sluiter vs. (3)Massu, and Sanguinetti vs. Gambill (Italian leads 2-1).

WTA REVIEW/PREVIEW
The seeds were 2-0 in Luxembourg Tuesday, with (5)Maria "Orgasmo" Sharapova (d. (WC)Flipkens) and (7)Molik (d. Grande) into the second round. Sharapova tried her best to lose the second set tiebreak, leading 6-0 before dropping seven straight points, but eventually pulling it out. Qualifiers has their day with (Q)Arvdisson (d. Ashley) and (Q)Foretz (d. (Q)Rittner) advancing, and homegirl Claudine Schaul thrilled the home crowd with a win over veteran Virginia Ruano Pascual.

Head case Jelena Dokic continued her head of steam after reaching the Zurich final last week, Tuesday in Linz upsetting (5)Daniela "The Walking Stick" Hantuchova 6-4, 6-1. The two other seeds in action advanced in (6)Pistolesi (d. (WC)Bammer in three) and (7)Suarez (d. (WC)Sprem).

On court today in Luxembourg are Tanasugarn vs. Barna, Black vs. Daniilidou, K.Clijsters vs. Schaul, Foretz vs. Rubin, Granville vs. Loit, and Sequera vs. Weingartner. In Linz the full-day Wednesday line-up is Myskina vs. Bovina in an all-Russian (Bovina leads 2-0), Mandula vs. Schett, Mikaelian vs. Schnyder in an all-Swiss (Mik leads 1-0), Petrova vs. Krasnoroutskaya in an all-Russian (Kras leads 2-0), Pisnik vs. Stevenson in an all-talent-search, Chladkova vs. Cervanova in an all-"ova," Jeyaseelan vs. Bartoli, and Klara "Kouky" Koukalova vs. Matevzic.

NOTES, QUOTES, AND BARBS
Serena Williams makes her first acting appearance in a dramatic role tonight on the Showtime series "Street Time." Serena plays the role of Meeka Hayes, a tennis player with an ego the size of New Jersey -- oh wait, that's real life...Swiss D-Cup captain Marc Rosset says he's not ready to hang it up: "I will not announce my retirement from tennis yet, I still have desire to play."...Guillermo Coria is the first Argentine in 20 years (Jose-Luis Clerc, 1983) to qualify for the Masters Cup...Check out this great pic of Jelena Dokic going into JenCap mode: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/031018/483/zur12110181654...NCAA champ Amer Delic has gone on a tear -- of losing first-round matches at the Futures level...The Tennis Channel will cover all five matches of the Australia-Spain Davis Cup final live, nice...Why are we getting e-mails from the Tennis Channel advertising tournaments they will cover that ended weeks ago?...Billie Jean King will play a judge on an upcoming episode of "Law & Order," her favorite TV show, according to the AP...Big props to SI.com's Jon "Stone" Wertheim, who this week in his column referred to the Russian ATP event in St. Petersburg as being held in St. Petersburg, Florida ("Safin is slowly getting back into the swing of things. He even played last week in Madrid and is in action this week in St. Petersburg, Fla.") -- way to cover tennis from your couch, that event has been going on for nine years!