TENNIS ROUNDUP : Rain Helps Sampras Join Ivanisevic in Final

Defending champion and top seed Pete Sampras defeated Veli Paloheimo of Finland, 6-4, 7-5, Friday to join Goran Ivanisevic of Yugoslavia in the final of a $225,000 grass-court tournament at Manchester, England.

Ivanisevic, seeded No. 2, had 16 aces in beating Gary Muller of South Africa, 7-6 (11-9), 7-6 (7-4).

A double fault in the ninth game by Paloheimo gave Sampras the one break of serve he needed to win the first set.

Paloheimo had taken a 5-2 lead in the second set, but a heavy rain gave Sampras time to regroup. After a one-hour delay, Sampras won five consecutive games to take the match.

“When I was losing the second set, the rain delay obviously helped me because I was a bit frustrated and had a bad attitude out there,” Sampras said. “Paloheimo’s someone I should beat pretty handily on the grass.”

The Ivanisevic-Muller match was a battle of big servers, with no breaks.

“I was lucky a little bit today because I think if we’d continued to play 100 more sets there would have been no chance for me to break,” Ivanisevic said.

“I was hoping to get to a tie-breaker, which is like a lottery on grass.”

He finally gained the advantage on his own third set point when Muller served a double fault.

Martina Navratilova and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario of Spain, the top two seeded players, scored straight-set semifinal victories in a $350,000 grass-court tournament at Eastbourne, England.

The top-seeded Navratilova defeated third-seeded Mary Joe Fernandez, 6-3, 6-0, and Sanchez Vicario took only 44 minutes to beat Gigi Fernandez, 6-1, 6-1.

Heavy rain delayed play until early evening on a chilly day.

Sanchez Vicario dominated on her serve with a series of winning volleys and handled the unseeded Fernandez’s serve-and-volley game with sharp passing shots on service returns.

Sanchez Vicario lost only three points on her serve in the first set and took advantage of Fernandez’s wildness--including four double-faults--in the second set.

“I was thinking it would be a more difficult match, but I played really well,” said Sanchez Vicario, who is known as a clay-court specialist but is becoming a top player on grass.

Navratilova, who will be seeking her 10th Eastbourne championship and her 156th singles title overall in today’s final, had more trouble with the fading light and slippery court than with Fernandez.

“It was cold and it was extremely difficult to see the ball,” she said. “I can’t believe I won the match as easily as I did.”