Coria, Gaudio to meet in All-Argentine final

PARIS — This is the breakthrough Grand Slam.

No matter which of the Argentines wins today’s men’s final at the French Open – third-seeded Guillermo Coria or unseeded Gaston Gaudio – it will mark the third year in a row that the winner grasps his first major.

Winning the French seldom portends of triumphs at other Grand Slams. Carlos Moya, Gustavo Kuerten, Al Costa and Juan Carlos Ferrero, who have won here in recent years, still are looking for a championship in Melbourne, London or New York.

With Coria, however, more is expected because of his gift for the game and his love of the game. But he will need a bigger serve, and is bound and determined to get one.

He is able to get by here without even an average serve because the clay allows him to use one of his major weapons, his legs, to run down everything. And that allows him to use another major weapon, his wondrous ground stroking, to dominate matches.

So it was surprising that when he was asked Saturday if he ever dreamed of playing Pete Sampras at Roland Garros, he replied: “Yes, but I would have preferred to meet him at Wimbledon instead of clay.” He wanted to play Sampras on Sampras’ best surface, where he won seven times.

That was the sort of reply you expect of a great champion. “It’s a pity we were never able to play. It’s the story of tennis,” Coria said.

At 22, he has been through a lot already. In 2001 he was suspended for seven months for taking a banned substance, even though the ATP Tour acknowledged that he ingested it unknowingly. He also is married and his wife travels with him this season.

For Gaudio, the celebration has begun early. He cried when he reached the final by thrashing yet a third Argentine, David Nalbandian, and was overjoyed at merely making the final.

He is the fourth unseeded player to reach the final of the last five Grand Slams, along with Marat Safin at the 2004 Australian, Mark Philippoussis at the 2003 Wimbledon and Martin Verkerk at the 2003 French Open.

This is the fifth time these two old friends have played on the ATP Tour, with Coria winning three of them. In fact, Juan Ignacio Chela is the only other Argentine to have beaten Coria … ever. He’s 23-2 in matches against his countrymen and has won his last 18 matches against Argentines.

Gaudio’s stock-in-trade is a magnificent backhand, which he used to break down both Lleyton Hewitt and Nalbandian in the last two matches while committing only 19 unforced errors in each match.

This time, however, he runs into a player whose backhand is nearly as fine, and Coria has the speed to put himself into position to hit it on balance.

Coria says his mind is clear. “If I think too much, it’s going to be against me,” he advised reporters. Others can do the thinking for him and the thinking is Coria in three.