COMMENTARY : SAMPRAS: WHAT'S RIGHT ABOUT TENNIS.

Byline: Mark Kreidler Sacramento Bee

It only happens once in a while that the whole of a sport is encapsulated by a single event, everything holy and heinous about it - every reason to either hug the thing or dismiss it. Once in a while a day comes along that forces you to choose up sides.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you tennis.

Wait, let's not all turn the page at once.

Last Sunday at the Sybase Open, the first stop of the season on the men's ATP Tour, the 39th-ranked player had the finest player in the world in his sights. This unheralded man, Greg Rusedski, was launching these laser serves over to Pete Sampras, who was standing there almost helplessly; and Rusedski was taking the first set 6-3 from an obviously flustered Sampras; and the crowd at San Jose Arena was beginning to sense something extraordinary.

``After that first set, I thought that if he was going to keep playing like that, it was going to be the match,'' Sampras said. ``He was on fire. There was nothing you could do except pray.''

So Greg Rusedski had Pete Sampras all but on his knees; and then Sampras, such a great champion, began to assert himself in the second set, unleashing his wicked groundstrokes and finding his range. Suddenly we had a title competition and it was compelling tennis, it really was.

Right up to the point that Rusedski quit.

This was in the middle of the match, along about the point that Sampras went up 4-0 in the second set. Rusedski started favoring his left wrist, the one with which he had been delivering serves in the 130- mph range for most of the day. He went to the sideline to receive medical attention, returned to the court, fell behind 0-5 in games and 0-30 on his serve, and walked right up to the net and retired. Match defaulted.

``If you're not 100 percent, there's no point in continuing,'' said Rusedski, who was diagnosed as having a sprained ligament in the wrist. ``It's going to be ugly tennis.''

On the professional level, of course, what Rusedski did was the most sensible thing in the world. He is a comer on the tour, a player who now has reached the finals of his past two tournaments and who dispatched Michael Chang and Andre Agassi to advance to meet Sampras. He had an entire season to consider, and win or lose in the final, he had had a wonderful week at the Sybase.

In other words, it was the kind of thing that tennis people would understand. And the rest of sporting America? Please.

Tennis' steady decline in popularity over the past decade in the United States is one of the most baffling developments in all the years I've covered games. This is a wonderful sport, an essentially accessible sport, yet it suffers from a severe case of disinterest. The people who could be playing tennis don't hate it; they simply don't relate to it.

There is a perception about pro tennis players that they are pampered brats who spend too much time posturing over lines calls and garnering appearance fees. This is, of course, often true. Yet perhaps the two greatest players in the sport, Sampras and Steffi Graf, are towering models of tenacity and perseverance and capitalization on talent - everything that any athlete would strive to become.

Sunday, when somebody asked Sampras whether he felt like the Michael Jordan of his sport, the player mumbled a demurrer, then said with a slight smile, ``I think I'm doin' OK for myself. I still can't slam-dunk, though.''

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Photo

Photo: Pete Sampras has been lauded for his unspoiled, classy manner - and outstanding ability.

Daily News File Photo