AUSTRALIAN OPEN : BELGIAN UPSETS SANCHEZ VICARIO.

Byline: Associated Press 

In a skid for months, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario suffered her earliest exit from a Grand Slam event in five years Saturday at the Australian Open - against a player who has never come close to winning a major.

Belgium's Dominique van Roost overcame a sore arm and a 2-5 deficit in the third set to upset the No. 2 seed 1-6, 6-4, 8-6 in the third round.

Van Roost, who had won only one small WTA tournament in six years on the tour and had gone as far as the fourth round of a major just once at the 1992 Australian Open, put on a show of precision tennis in her third-set comeback.

Kissing the lines with two-handed backhands and putting pressure on Sanchez Vicario by attacking her at the net, van Roost played the finest match of her career for her biggest victory.

Before serving for the match at 7-6 in the third set, the right-handed van Roost needed treatment from a trainer for soreness in her right forearm and took the full three minutes allowed.

When van Roose drilled a forehand volley winner for a 30-0 lead, she shook her throbbing arm. A moment later, she put away another forehand volley from midcourt to reach triple match point.

Sanchez Vicario escaped one match point when van Roost slapped a forehand wide but couldn't avoid the next one as she drove a return into the net.

Sanchez Vicario hadn't lost so early in a major since bowing out of Wimbledon in the second round in 1992. A finalist at the Australian in 1994 and 1995, she lost in the quarters last year.

But for a player who has consistently been among the best in women's tennis, a winner of the 1994 U.S. Open and the 1994 and 1989 French Opens, Sanchez Vicario has been distinctly unimpressive in recent months.

After reaching the finals of the French, Wimbledon and the Olympics last summer, she lost in the fourth round of the U.S. Open and the quarters of the last three tournaments she played in 1996, including the WTA Championships.

Van Roost, formerly Dominique Monami before her marriage in 1995, won her only WTA tournament in Cardiff, Wales, last year.

Sanchez Vicario's loss spoiled a fiesta at the Australian Open, where at least three Spanish men reached the round of 16 in a celebration of their switch from clay-court specialists to hard-court threats.

Van Roost next plays 15th-seeded Chanda Rubin, a 6-1, 6-3 winner over Sandra Kleinova. No. 14 Mary Joe Fernandez also won in straight sets, as did No. 8 Irina Spirlea, No. 9 Karina Habsudova, and unseeded Ruxandra Dragomir.

Albert Costa's victory Saturday, a day after wins by Felix Mantilla and Carlos Moya, gave Spain more players in the fourth round of the men's draw than any country except the U.S., which was likely to have four. Alberto Berasategui of Spain was playing a late match and hoping to join his compatriots.

``Normally, in other years, we were practicing all the time on clay, and now we are practicing half a year on hard courts,'' said the No. 10 Costa, a 6-4, 6-2, 7-5 victor over Australian Scott Draper.

The motivation for the move to hard courts is essentially money and the rankings.

``We realize that the money and the points are in the hard-court events,'' said Moya, who knocked off in succession defending champion Boris Becker, Patrick McEnroe and Bernd Karbacher.

Costa next plays South African Wayne Ferreira, who beat Italy's Renzo Furlan 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (7-3), 6-1.

No. 5 Thomas Muster, the king of clay, also hasn't dropped a set so far as he moved into the fourth round with a 6-4, 7-6 (7-2), 6-3 victory over German Jens Knippschild.