Meteorologists are forecasting that this will be the hottest summer in Europe for more than 100 years, which may be bad news as far as the French Open aspirations of Pete Sampras are concerned.
The world number one is always suspect when the temperature rises, and yesterday the centre court in Rome was searingly hot. No cat would have ventured across it, and Sampras began his Italian Open first-round match against Sweden's Thomas Enqvist with a wary step.
The crowd, aware of Sampras's feeble first-round defeat here against his fellow American Jim Courier last year, and his recent 61, 6-1 capitulation in Monte Carlo to France's Fabrice Santoro, turned off their mobile phones to roundly whistle the number one seed as he fell behind 3-0 in the first set.
"I didn't feel very comfortable at the start but as the match went on I began to settle in," said Sampras, who won 7-6, 6-4. "The balls were flying and the court was playing more like a hard court."
Sampras won the title here in 1994 but in his two appearances since then he has headed for the hills after the first round. On Monday he escorted six children on a sightseeing tour around the Foro Italico. It is a wonder he remembered where things were.
Enqvist had lost seven of his past eight encounters with Sampras, but they had never met on clay. The feeling was that Sampras might struggle, particularly as the Swede has been in excellent form, winning titles in Marseille and Munich. Enqvist served well, but Sampras served better. And once his trusty weapon was in the groove, the rest of his game followed suit.
For Ivan Lendl, the winning of Wimbledon became an obsession; it was the one Grand Slam title to elude the Czech-born American. Similarly the French Open has escaped Sampras. "I would love to do it but it will not become an obsession," he said. "Over the next four or five years I will be giving it my best shot but I am not going to change my yearly schedule just for the sake of it."
The nearest Sampras has come to the title at Roland Garros was two years ago when he reached the last four before running out of gas against the eventual champion, Yevgeny Kafelnikov of Russia, who yesterday defeated the Swede Thomas Johansson 7-6, 6-2. That was another extremely hot year and Sampras's suspect stamina, tested to its limit on clay, was found wanting.
Sampras now plays another Swede, Magnus Norman, who knocked him out of the French Open last year.
Pat Rafter, the US Open champion, arrived here after a month off and gave the impression of having left his tennis brain on the beach, losing 6-3, 6-7, 6-4 to Holland's Sjeng Schalken, a late replacement for the Swiss Marc Rosset, who had a bad back.
"I tried to persuade Marc to play just one point," joked Rafter, who last year reached the semi-final in Paris by serve-volleying on clay.
