Round Of 16 Loaded With First-Timers Upsets Trim Wimbledon Field To Unlikely Group

After an upset-laden opening week that had even the defending champion Pete Sampras wondering if there wasn’t something supernatural going on around here, the Wimbledon lawns got a rest Sunday from the pitter-patter of pounding feet - many of them attached to unheralded combatants.

But it was business as usual at the practice courts, where the 32 men and women left in contention, 19 of them unseeded, made sure their games remained in working order for the Round of 16 beginning Monday.

“I think everybody is thinking the same as me - everybody has a chance to go for the final,” said 37th-ranked Magnus Gustafsson. The 29-year-old Swede earned his fourth-round spot against the bright light of Britain, 62nd-ranked Tim Henman, by defeating 11th-seeded Wayne Ferreira on Saturday. That upset left the bottom half of the men’s draw with only one seeded player, No. 13 Todd Martin.

Gustafsson had words of praise for his next opponent, Henman.

“He’s a man for the future, that’s for sure,” he said of Henman, whose strokes are textbook quality. “He reminds me a little bit of Sampras; he just needs a bigger serve, and then he can take the big step.”

Gustafsson also complimented Martin’s opponent, the 21-year-old Thomas Johansson, another new-generation Swede.

“I played him last year, and I said, ‘Geez, if this is the future of tennis, I don’t want to play that much longer,”’ Gustafsson said of the 106th-ranked Johansson. “He serves so hard and returns so well, I don’t know why he hasn’t had his breakthrough yet. Maybe he’ll get it here.”

Michael Stich, meanwhile, who agrees that he loves to disagree, instead accused the Wimbledon seeding committee of foul play. According to Stich, those misguided manipulators loaded the top half of the draw (his half) with big-serving grass-court veterans and dumped the clay-courters on the bottom half.

“It was a little surprising that all the big servers showed up in the top half and all the so-called clay-courters, except Boris, showed up in the bottom,” said Stich, who won his only Grand Slam event here in 1991. “It’s very sad; I think it’s not good for the tournament - and unfortunately for me, everybody in the top half is still around.”

Stich was particularly alluding to the top-seeded Sampras, who has a 24-match winning streak here, and fourth-seeded Goran Ivanisevic, twice a Wimbledon finalist.

“Goran and Pete are definitely the ones to watch out for, the ones most difficult to play,” said the 10th-seeded Stich, the highest player left after Sampras and Ivanisevic, “and the other ones not, because they aren’t like real grass players.”

On the women’s side, half of the seeded 16 are still in contention, including last year’s finalists, Steffi Graf and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, and Conchita Martinez, the 1994 champion.

Graf said she was paying little attention to the who’s who in the Round of 16, perhaps because she is already sizing up the potential for a rematch with Sanchez Vicario, the player she defeated for this year’s French Open title. Graf said that, by her accounts, all shock value at this event began and ended when second-seeded Monica Seles was ambushed by 59th-ranked Katarina Studenikova of Slovakia.

The fourth-seeded Sanchez Vicario agreed that this is not the time to worry if Wimbledon has put a curse on its seeded players this year.

“Now it’s the second week, and the whole thing starts all over again,” the imperturbable Spaniard said. “I’m just taking it one at a time to see if I can get to the final.”

They all are.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: FEATURED MATCHES Today’s matches on Centre Court: Steffi Graf (1), Germany, vs. Martina Hingis (16), Switzerland Tim Henman, Britain, vs. Magnus Gustafsson, Sweden Pete Sampras (1), Tampa, Fla., vs. Cedric Pioline (16), France