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 Good start Muster masterful in Monte Carlo win
Posted: Tuesday April 20, 1999 12:27 PM
MONTE CARLO, Monaco (AP) -- British No. 1 Tim Henman was eliminated from the Monte Carlo Open Tuesday after failing to take advantage of a match point against Brazilian Fernando Meligeni. Meligeni won the second-round match 6-7 (5-7), 6-4, 7-5 in two hours, 38 minutes. Henman, the top British player and the No. 3 seed, missed his big opportunity when he was leading 5-4 in the final set. With a break point and a match point, Henman made an unforced error, hitting weakly into the net, and then saw his left-handed Brazilian opponent cruise through the next three games. Meligeni, who had reached the quarterfinals of his last two events, raced to a 5-2 lead in the first set. Henman came back to win the next three. At 5-5, he couldn't take advantage of three break points, but squeezed through the tiebreak 7-5. Still, Henman, who benefited from a first-round bye, never looked fully at ease on the clay court, and in the second set he netted an easy smash to lose the set. The muggy conditions didn't suit Henman's serve and volley game, and he has now won only six of 20 matches on clay. A day after his victory over French No. 1 Cedric Pioline, Boris Becker withdrew from the event after the death of his father, Karl-Heinz, from stomach cancer. Becker was due to play Frenchman Jerome Golmard in the second round of the $2.2 million event. In early play Tuesday, three-time Monte Carlo champion Thomas Muster downed No. 16 seed Thomas Johansson 6-3, 6-4, in a first-round match. The 31-year-old Austrian, a winner of a record 40 titles on clay, stormed to a 5-1 lead in the second set. But Johansson pulled back to 4-5 and Muster had to cling on to victory. "The first 11 games were much easier than the finish," Muster said. "Johansson started to take some risks, and it worked." "I have trained really hard this winter and I hope that will translate into good results on clay this season." Key Biscayne finalist Sebastien Grosjean advanced to the second round with a convincing 6-4, 6-0 win against Argentine qualifier Sebastian Prieto. The Frenchman will play No. 14 seed Tommy Haas in one of the highlights of the second round. Paraguay's Ramon Delgado, who beat Pete Sampras at last year's French Open, defeated experienced Swede Jonas Bjorkman, 7-6 (7-5), 0-6, 6-4, to set up a second-round contest with No. 5 seed Mark Philippoussis. No. 10 seed Albert Costa and No. 12 seed Thomas Enqvist beat Mariano Zabaleta and Dominik Hrbaty respectively to advance to the second round.
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