Sampras Struggles, but Doesn’t Wilt in Heat

MELBOURNE, Australia — Pete Sampras had never met Dominik Hrbaty but is unlikely to forget him.

Hrbaty, ranked No. 76 and the youngest player in the top 100 at 19, drilled 20 aces past a sagging Sampras and held a 4-2 lead in the fifth set of the fourth round of his first Grand Slam tournament.

But Sampras showed why he is still No. 1, coming back to beat Hrbaty of Slovakia, 6-7 (7-4), 6-3, 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, Monday in less than three hours in more than 120-degree heat in the Australian Open.

Hrbaty self-destructed under pressure, double-faulting three times in his last two service games for a total of 15 double-faults in the match.

“It’s really not about tennis at that point,” Sampras said of the final games. “It’s about luck. He played well enough to beat me. I got a little bit lucky, and sometimes that’s what it takes.”

Sampras also won because he played smart--if not pretty--tennis under brutal conditions, taking a lesson from his exhausting five-set victory over Alex Corretja at the U.S. Open last year when Sampras suffered heat stroke and vomited on court.

Sampras made sure he loaded up on liquids before and during the match, and he tried to keep points short.

“It was so hot today, it was a joke,” Sampras said. “My feet were on fire. We were both feeling it.”

The heat not only led to a lower quality of tennis, Sampras said, but was so hazardous to the players’ health that officials should consider closing the roof or allowing longer rest between sets.

“I don’t know where you draw the line,” Sampras said. “It’s going to have to come a point where someone really gets hurt out there to make a rule. It’s the toughest conditions I ever had to play under.”

Hrbaty watched the Sampras-Corretja match and said he thought he might be able to exploit Sampras’ vulnerability to the heat.

“But it was tough for me also,” said Hrbaty.

A day after No. 1 Steffi Graf was upset in the same sizzling heat, Sampras didn’t try to run down every ball. Rather, he relied on his serve--he had 17 aces--and went for winners.

The players weren’t the only ones suffering. More than two dozen fans were treated by medics for heat exhaustion, including one woman who was taken to a hospital after collapsing.

In a later match, eighth-seeded Wayne Ferreira of South Africa retired against 10th-seeded Albert Costa of Spain because of a leg injury, trailing, 6-3, 6-2, 3-2.

In the women’s draw, Belgium’s unseeded Dominique van Roost, who knocked off No. 2 Arantxa Sanchez Vicario in the third round, upset No. 15 Chanda Rubin, 7-5, 6-4.