TENNIS: Triple triumph for Martinez makes it a treble

TENNIS

JOHN ROBERTS

reports from Rome

The Wimbledon championship may have come as a pleasant surprise last July, but Conchita Martinez is showing irrepressible form on clay, the surface best suited to her magnificent groundstrokes.Yesterday she joined two of the greats, Margaret Smith and Chris Evert, as the only players to have won the Italian women's singles title three years consecutively.

A 6-3, 6-1 victory against her Spanish compatriot, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, gained Martinez her fourth successive title since employing the Brazilian Carlos Kirmayr as her coach two months ago. Kirmayr is best remembered for coaxing Gabriela Sabatini to approach the net and win the 1990 United States Open. He also guided Sanchez Vicario towards four titles during the first half of 1993.

The flourish of yesterday's success, which brightened a wet weekend at the Foro Italico, took the Martinez/Kirmayr partnership to 21 wins for the loss of only two sets: one, surprisingly, in her opening match here against Adriana Serra-Zanetti; the other against Iva Majoli at Hilton Head in March.

It is a measure of Martinez's 85-minute performance yesterday that the vanquished Sanchez Vicario is still guaranteed a return to No 1 in the world rankings today and, due to Steffi Graf's illness, will remain at the top for her defence of the French Open title in a fortnight's time.

Martinez, ranked No 4, swept into a 4-0 lead, allowing her opponent only five points, and then withstood Sanchez Vicario's recovery to 4-3 and did not allow her concentration to waver during a 76-minute rain stoppage with the score at 15-all in the eighth game.

Sanchez Vicario had to save four break points in order to salvage her only game in the second set. Martinez proceeded to win the next six, dropping only three points on serve (and one of those was a double-fault).

Pete Sampras opens the defence of the men's singles title this week against the Frenchman Fabrice Santoro. Andrei Medvedev, who defeated the world No 2 in the semi-finals in Hamburg on Saturday, is also in Sampras's half of the draw, along with Jim Courier, Sergi Bruguera, Goran Ivanisevic and Alberto Berasategui.

Bruguera and Courier, who have each won the French Open title twice in the past four years, could meet in the third round here. Michael Chang, the No 2 seed, opens with a match against Mark Philippoussis. The promising young Australian, whose talents are better suited to faster surfaces, has been given a wild card.

n Andrei Medvedev, the defending champion, took only 78 minutes to retain his German Open title in Hamburg yesterday when he thrashed Goran Ivanisevic 6-3, 6-2, 6-1. The 12th seeded Ukrainian celebrated by walking into the stands to embrace his girlfriend, the German player Anke Huber, after claiming his first title in a year.

Results, Sporting Digest, page 32