Seles Advances, With A Rush Ankle Injury Ousts Ivanisevic As U.S. Open Tennis Play Begins

She could feel her heart beating fast, her muscles tighten, her smile stiffen.

Three years after she last won the U.S. Open, Monica Seles returned as anxious and nervous as she ever has been, hitting the ball too strongly, too eagerly and, in the end, too well.

Breathing hard, gulping for air at times, yet still superior in every aspect of the game, the two-time Open champion extended her stunning comeback Monday night with another lopsided victory.

Grunting as always, Seles slugged serves at up to 105 mph, drove groundstrokes with the pace of old into the corners and displayed a deft touch on drop shots as she beat a plucky but overpowered Ruxandra Dragomir 6-3, 6-1.

There was drama of a different kind afterward when No. 6 Goran Ivanisevic sprained his ankle in the third set after winning the first two, tried to play on after treatment, and finally quit at 4-6, 2-6, 6-3, 3-1 against Brett Steven. Ivanisevic, a runner-up twice at Wimbledon, also lost in the first round of the Open last year.

The fans, though, came to see Seles, and she responded the way they expected.

“The whole match I was very nervous,” Seles said. “My heart was so fast. She just tried to slow me down so much, and my adrenaline was going so fast. I had so much energy in me. I told myself just concentrate, concentrate, concentrate.”

After nervously double-faulting to start the match, Seles won the next four points and settled down into a rhythm that would take her to her 15th consecutive victory at the U.S. Open - seven apiece in 1991 and ‘92 when she won, and one more now after a two-year interval.

Seles didn’t have an easy time in this match, despite the score. Dragomir, a Romanian ranked No. 44, played well and made her run. Seles isn’t yet in the best shape, even after winning the Canadian Open just over a week ago, and there were moments when she bent over gasping for air following long rallies.

She asserted herself in the third game with a 105 mph service winner at game-point, then got the only break of the set she needed in the next game for a 3-1 lead.

In the second set, Seles yielded only 14 points in the seven games.

“She is unbelievable,” Dragomir said after playing her for the first time. “I couldn’t even imagine that she is that good.”

Defending champion Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, reduced to a bit player in the Monica Seles Open, produced one of many predictable victories, dispatching Catalina Cristea 6-1, 6-1.

Gabriela Sabatini, No. 9, was no more tested in a 6-1, 6-1 victory over Adriana Serra-Zanetti. Mary Pierce, No. 6, had it almost as easy beating Mariaan de Swardt 6-4, 6-1.

Nor were there many compelling matches among the men’s seeds as No. 4 Boris Becker beat Alex Lopez Moron 6-1, 6-0, 6-3, and unseeded Stefan Edberg defeated Martin Damm 6-0, 6-3, 7-6 (7-4).