Ivanisevic

WIMBLEDON, England -- Anyone coming to Wimbledon's men's semifinals to see tennis yesterday left unfulfilled.Wham! Slam!That was No. 1 seed and defending champion Pete Sampras moving into the Wimbledon final with a 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, victory over fellow big-server Todd Martin, and sending many of the 13,000 fans at Centre Court charging to the exits in search of an adrenalin rush.Wham! Bam! Slam!That was No. 4 seed Goran Ivanisevic joining Sampras in the finals with a 6-2, 7-6 (8-6), 6-4 victory over Boris "The Gamesmanship King" Becker.

Croatia just one win away from first Davis Cup crown If his younger teammates can deliver, Goran Ivanisevic will lift the Davis Cup trophy today and take it home to Croatia for the first time. Ivan Ljubicic and Mario Ancic beat Slovakia's Dominik Hrbaty and Michal Mertinak, 7-6 (5), 6-3, 7-6 (5), yesterday in Bratislava, Slovakia, giving Croatia a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five series between two first-time finalists. Croatia needs to win one of today's reverse singles - Ljubicic meets Hrbaty and Ancic plays Karol Kucera - to clinch the title.

WIMBLEDON, England -- Goran Ivanisevic of Yugoslavia discussed his fractured country and his fabulous serve.Politics and civil war, he can't control. But the serve is his weapon of choice in a bid to become a Wimbledon champion.Yesterday, the No. 10 seed Ivanisevic defeated Andrew Castle of Great Britain, 7-6, 7-6, 6-2. The first-round triumph came only hours after Yugoslav government troops moved into Slovenia to crush an uprising."For me, it's OK; I'm just concentrating on tennis," Ivanisevic said.

WIMBLEDON, England -- Goran Ivanisevic will be missed. His flamboyant game will be missed, including the way he busted 130-mph serves from a loose, skinny body. His loud mouth will be missed, the way he carried on colorful and sometimes profane conversations in English and Croatian with himself, the fans, the umpires, his opponents -- even with the tennis balls and rackets and a blade of grass yesterday on Centre Court at Wimbledon. "Help me," he said after a forehand by Lleyton Hewitt had sent Ivanisevic splayed face down.

Their weapons of choice are tennis rackets, not guns. They're sportsmen, not soldiers. And they're angry and scared and even a little confused.They want to be at the U.S. Open, but they also want to be in Yugoslavia. They play for money in the United States and Europe and Asia. But back home, others are playing for greater stakes in a percolating civil war.Excuse Goran Ivanisevic and Goran Prpic for bringing politics and passion to the U.S. Open yesterday. They are Croatians who by the quirk of a draw were placed on the same back court in Flushing Meadow while thousands of miles away their homeland in Yugoslavia was under siege.

NEW YORK -- In the past, a foot fault on match point in a third-set tiebreaker would have been enough to send Goran Ivanisevicscreaming out of the U.S. Open.But yesterday, the tortured Croatian only looked like a man about to lose his head. He was up 6-3, 6-2, and 11-10 in the third-set tiebreaker when an ace on his third match-point opportunity was disallowed for a foot fault.The corners of Ivanisevic's mouth turned so far down they were in danger of running off his chin. Across the net, Hendrik Dreekmann put his hand over his mouth, trying to hide his laughter.

WIMBLEDON, England -- Court 2, famous for claiming top-seeded Wimbledon players before their time, snatched fifth seed Goran Ivanisevic yesterday.Only a year ago, the hard-serving native of Split, Croatia, was making his way to the final of this Grand Slam tournament. Then he ran into Andre Agassi, who prevailed at Centre Court.But yesterday, Ivanisevic, like former top seeds Arthur Ashe, Ilie Nastase, John McEnroe and Jimmy Conners before him, was beaten on Court 2.This time it was Lansing, Mich.

PARIS -- It was a bad combination: On a stormy day, a stormy guy found himself upset in the opening round of the French Open in a carbon copy of his premature exits from the Australian and U.S. opens.Three sets and out went fourth-seeded Goran Ivanisevic, and then the melodramatic Croatian threatened to break all of his rackets. Then he threatened to quit tennis.Then he promised to calm down, take a 10-day vacation, and tTC check back into Grand Slam tournament contention in time for Wimbledon, where his thunderclap serve has taken him to two finals in the past three years.

TennisGoran Ivanisevic lost a match in his sleep yesterday, giving Andre Agassi a tainted title.On the morning of their final at the Lipton Championships in Key Biscayne, Fla., Ivanisevic woke up with a stiff neck. He underwent three hours of treatment and tried to play but quit in the fourth game."To beat Andre you have to be 105 percent, and I was maybe 2," Ivanisevic said.The tournament doctor said Ivanisevic probably slept wrong, and the ailment is unlikely to bother him for more than a few days.

MUNICH, Germany -- There was no fireworks display, literall or figuratively, nor any rock music, dry ice or smarmy testimonials. In what may very well have been his final appearance on the professional tennis circuit, John McEnroe exited yesterday pretty much the way he made his entrance 15 years and 77 titles ago -- with the light tread of a cat, bearing the artistic but slightly underpowered game that carried him to the pinnacle of his sport.McEnroe, 33, was ushered out of the Grand Slam Cup by Goran Ivanisevic of Croatia, 3-6, 6-4, 6-2. Ivanisevic's thunderous serves provided the only background music, although a questionable line call against McEnroe while he led, 6-3, 3-3, 0-30, helped turn the tide for Ivanisevic.

WIMBLEDON, England - They were like a couple of aging troubadours, back on the big stage for one last show, and they were so good yesterday it turned a wet opening day at Wimbledon into an afternoon dripping with nostalgia and sunny memories. First, Martina Navratilova, 47 and absent from the singles draw at Wimbledon for 10 years, routed Colom bian Catalina Castano, 6-0, 6-1, before holding yet another of her interminably long but always entertaining news conferences. Then, Goran Ivanisevic, 32, won his first grass court match since he came out of nowhere, unseeded, to win the 2001 Wimbledon for his first and only Grand Slam title.

WIMBLEDON, England -- Wimbledon misses Goran Ivanisevic. All three of them. The tournament misses his big serves, multiple playing personalities and ability to turn a championship match into a personal psychodrama. But a new Goran may be on the rise even as the old Goran sits at home nursing a bum shoulder and ruing his inability to defend his title. The new kid on the scuffed lawns is Mario Ancic, a baby-faced 18-year-old from Ivanisevic's hometown of Split, Croatia. Ancic looks a little like Ivanisevic and plays a lot like him, too. Moreover, he considers Ivanisevic not just an idol, but also an unofficial older brother.

GORAN Ivanisevic lacked the temperament of a champion, 'twas said. Three times a Wimbledon finalist, he always choked at the big points. Bad Goran couldn't control his anger at line calls, fury at mistakes. At 29, he was washed up, physically hurting, ranked 125th in the world, invited to Wimbledon only on a "wild card." What a setup. One after another, the rising stars of tennis fell to his relentless power serve and volley, so dominating his other skills, if any, rarely came into play.

WIMBLEDON, England -- They'll never have another day like this at Wimbledon, when the masses stormed the joint for the "People's Final," when Centre Court fans dressed in green-and-gold Australia wigs and red-and-white Croatian checkerboard soccer shirts, when a great noise made its way to the rafters as the crowd roared itself hoarse with a dueling chant turned gorgeous melody. "Goran," they yelled. "Rafter," they answered. On and on it went yesterday in a place where rules and decorum demand silence and reverence but where bedlam was now busting out all over, through four sets and then five, Australian and Croatian flags flapping on a gray summer day, tension rising and hearts racing, until the last, almost unbearable, can't-watch-this moments.

WIMBLEDON, England - What did you expect, a gallant British victory? Not in the country that gave the world such sports as rugby, cricket and tennis and then got beat at its own games. Not in the land where excruciating losses are not only expected, but they're also often celebrated. As Britain's Tim Henman took the court yesterday against Goran Ivanisevic for the completion of their three-day, five-set Wimbledon men's semifinal match, there was a sense of foreboding in the Centre Court stands, and perhaps in all of Britain, that the end would not be very pretty for the guy representing the home team.

WIMBLEDON, England - You either love Wimbledon or hate it. You either keep the grass or rip it up. You either put up with rain in the English summertime or dome the joint. Which brings us to yesterday, one of the weirdest in Wimbledon history. They didn't finish the men's semifinal between Tim Henman of Britain and Goran Ivanisevic of Croatia, but they did manage to play for 51 more minutes between drops of rain. They never even struck a ball in the women's final between reigning champion Venus Williams of the United States and Justine Henin of Belgium.

WIMBLEDON, England - What did you expect, a gallant British victory? Not in the country that gave the world such sports as rugby, cricket and tennis and then got beat at its own games. Not in the land where excruciating losses are not only expected, but they're also often celebrated. As Britain's Tim Henman took the court yesterday against Goran Ivanisevic for the completion of their three-day, five-set Wimbledon men's semifinal match, there was a sense of foreboding in the Centre Court stands, and perhaps in all of Britain, that the end would not be very pretty for the guy representing the home team.

WIMBLEDON, England -- Poor Goran Ivanisevic. He's still haunted by his two defeats in the Wimbledon finals.During a rain delay Thursday, he walked into the locker room, turned on the television set and discovered that the British Broadcasting Corporation was showing his 1992 final loss to Andre Agassi."

WIMBLEDON, England - Whatever happens today, Wimbledon should thank Goran Ivanisevic. He saved the tournament. He's the wild card who blew apart the stacked deck of 32 seeds. He's the big server who reminded the tennis world what real grass-court tennis looks like. He's the veteran who refused to quit, despite a bad shoulder and a plummeting career. He's the player who brought back heart and humor into an increasingly mercenary and mirthless game. And he's still magically and almost unbelievably hanging around in the men's semifinals.

WIMBLEDON, England - One is an old champion who won the title at the tail end of the first Bush administration. Two are old favorites who have come within inches of winning crowns. And the last is a quiet Englishman out to end more than a half-century of men's tennis misery for Britain. They are Wimbledon's men's semifinalists: Andre Agassi, Patrick Rafter, Goran Ivanisevic and Tim Henman. Yesterday, the veteran grass-court quartet ousted the teens and pretenders by storming through the quarterfinals during a day of high drama and high humidity at the sweaty All England Club.