Pete Sampras reached the Australian Open quarter final yesterday without losing a set in a week of Grand Slam tennis, while the battle intensified for the women's title.
The world number one fought his first tie break of the week in his fourth round against Hicham Arazi of Morocco.
With rain restricting play to the covered centre court, the world number 47 led Sampras a merry song and dance for a while, but Sampras came through 7-6 (11/9), 6-4, 6-4.
All four of his matches have been in three sets and most of them a lot quicker than the two hours and seven minutes it took to beat Arazi.
His next opponent is in-form Slovak, Karol Kucera, who won the Sydney tournament last week and reached the quarter-finals yesterday by beating Australia's Richard Fromberg 6-2, 3-6, 6-2, 75.
Also through are number four seed Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden, who beat Byron Black of Zimbabwe 6-2, 6-1, 6-4. Bjorkman plays number six seed Petr Korda of the Czech Republic, who saw off Frenchman Cedric Pioline 6-4, 64, 3-6, 6-3.
In the tough women's battle, number two seed Lindsay Davenport crushed Romanian 15th seed Ruxandra Dragomir 6-0, 6-0.
Her quarter final opponent will be Venus Williams, unseeded but heavily backed by the bookies, who beat Patti Schynder of Switzerland 6-4, 6-1 and insisted she had no faults to correct.
Sampras admitted he was surprised by the live-wire game of Arazi, who knocked out Australian 15th seed Mark Philippoussis in the second round and had a set point against the defending champion.
"I thought he was one of the quickest guys I have ever played," said Sampras in tribute to his Moroccan opponent.
"I was surprised by the way he served a lot of aces, a lot of service winners. I thought I was hitting some big shots. I had him on the ropes, and he came up with some huge winners."
Sampras said he could see former number one Andre Agassi looming as the main challenger from the other half of the draw. Agassi, who has made a stunning comeback at the Open, plays Alberto Berasategui of Spain in the fourth round today. Venus Williams stormed into the last eight of the tight battle for the women's title and insisted she had no weaknesses to worry about.
Meticulous preparation over the past year with her father and coach Richard Williams is starting to pay dividends for the brash youngster, who lost to world number one Martina Hingis in the final of last year's US Open but beat her last week in Sydney.
Davenport thought her 48 minute demolition of Dragomir had been her first without losing a game. And she admitted it was not ideal preparation for her quarterfinal with Williams.
"Venus hits the ball a lot harder than anybody I've played against so far this tournament so I'll definitely have to practice tomorrow and tell my coach to crank it up a bit," said Davenport.
"It's going to be an extremely tough match on Tuesday, there are still a couple of doubters of my game out there, but I'll be trying to make it to the semis."
Only centre court matches were able to be played as rain wrecked scheduling on outside courts following a heavy storm early yesterday and lingering rain throughout the day.
Organisers switched Bjorkman's encounter with Black and Kucera against Fromberg from outside courts to the weather-protected centre court.
Several matches had to be held over to today, including the women's fourth round ties between Tamarine Tanasugarn of Thailand and French ninth seed Sandrine Testud, and eighth seed Conchita Martinez of Spain against Barbara Schett of Austria.
Hingis must try to secure her quarter-final place against Indonesia's Yayuk Basuki today.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)