Seles Wins Emotional Tune-Up

Playing her first match on red clay since she was stabbed three years ago in Germany, Monica Seles put her sore shoulder and wounded psyche to the test in Madrid and came away encouraged.

“It was a pretty emotional match for me, walking out there again on the red clay,” Seles said in a conference call from Madrid, where she needed to stage a 3-6, 7-6 (10-8), 6-2 comeback before defeating the 43rd-ranked Barbara Schett of Austria.

It was her first match in Europe since she was knifed in the back by a spectator in Hamburg, Germany.

Seles saved five match points in the second set, three of them as she served from 0-40 in the 12th game, in which she desperately needed to hold serve for 6-6 to force a tie breaker. Once there, she nullified two more of Schett’s match points, broke down the Austrian’s confidence and went on to dominate the third set.

In St. Poelten, Austria, Thomas Muster saved four match points in the third-set tiebreaker to outlast Marc-Kevin Goellner of Germany 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 7-6 (9-7) and advance to the quarterfinals of the Raiffeisen Grand Prix. Third-seeded Byron Black was eliminated 6-4, 7-5 by Stefan Edberg.

Illness forced Mary Joe Fernandez to quit her match with Alexia Dechaume-Balleret in the Strasbourg (France) Open.

With Boris Becker out with a thigh injury, Spain easily beat Germany for its second victory at the World Team Cup in Duesseldorf, Germany, and will play Switzerland for a place in the final.

Becker, No. 5 in the world, said he was pulling out of both this tournament and the French Open, which starts Monday.