PARISIAN SUNDAY mornings have a special charm. The secular and the religious intertwine, with the smell of freshlybaked bread and succulent cakes mingling with the sonorous tolling of church bells. Then, once mass and lunch is over, comes sport yesterday, the French derby, the seventh day of Roland Garros and the election.
The tennis, particularly on the men's side, has been almost as volatile as the politics and the Court Central experienced an immediate upset when Spain's Alex Corretja, the number eight seed, lost to Belgium's Filip Dewulf.
The Spaniards began with 18 men and have now been reduced to just two - Sergi Bruguera, the champion here in 1993 and 1994, and Galo Blanco, a scarcely considered 20 year old ranked just outside the top 100.
They had been dubbed the Spanish Armada, a singularly appropriate epithet considering their performance here and the fate of the original fleet. Yesterday's gusts did not quite drive Corretja to the Irish coast, but he did not need a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing.
Those who wrack their collectively addled brains at dinner parties to draw up a list of 10 famous Belgians may thus, by the end of this week, have another name to add to Georges Simenon and ... those others.
Dewulf, by beating Corretja, became the first qualifier to reach the quarterfinals of the French Open, where he now meets Sweden's Magnus Norman who, having previously disposed of Pete Sampras, the number one seed (and Greg Rusedski), defeated last year's Swiss semi finalist, Marc Rosset.
Both Corretja and Rosset won the opening set of their fourthround matches, which made defeat the more galling. Rosset, short of a cat, took off his white cap and kicked it severely. Poor Corretja, the Italians champion a few weeks ago, and in wonderfully consistent claycourt form, cast his eyes to fastchanging skies and blamed the wind: "It killed my game."
It had been supposed that Australia's Mark Philippoussis might blow up his own gale against the defending champion, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, but the Russian was wonderfully inspired. Time and again he flashed winners past Philippoussis who, for all his power, was left powerless as the Russian took the match 6-2, 6-3, 7-5.
The much anticipated path towards a Martina Hingis Steffi Graf final next Saturday was obstructed by a particularly nasty pot hole when Hingis suddenly lost the second set 6-0 against Austria's Barbara Paulus.
The perennial smile was eclipsed as Hingis, unable to control her shots in the increasingly blustery conditions, entered a deep strop, bouncing her racket on the clay in such a way as to not improve its symmetry.
Hingis stopped moving her feet, although it took only one peach of a cross court forehand early in the third set to send her winging away to a 6-3, 0-6. 6-0 victory.
Steffi Graf was expected to receive a decent test against the number 13 seed, Irina Spirlea of Romania, even though Spirlea's form has dipped rather sharply of late.
Graf lost her opening serve and needed the services of the trainer mid way through the first set not, thankfully, to attend to her dodgy left knee, but to provide eyedrops to get the Roland Garros clay out of her eyes.
Spirlea, who like Graf has a mighty forehand, won the tie break but thereafter had her own eyes filled not with grit, but the sight of the ball passing by her with remorseless regularity.
In tomorrow's quarter finals, Graf will play South Africa's Amanda Coetzer who has won two of their last three meetings, including the Australian Open. Coetzer defeated Conchita Martinez in three sets, the first time in 11 meetings she has beaten the Spaniard. "A leap of faith," she called it.
Monica Seles avenged her 7-6, 7-6 defeat in Rome last month, where she led 6-2 in both tie breaks, with a straight sets win over France's adopted Mary Pierce. Not a leap of faith this for the three times champion, but a grim stride of sheer determination in the face of a partizan crowd.
