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Sampras joins Rafter on injury list

Top-seed Pete Sampras has joined Pat Rafter as an injury victim, quitting at the start of his third set at the 870,000-dollar RCA Championships yesterday with a hip flexor strain to hand a 6-4, 3-6 third-round win to American Vince Spadea.

The Sampras mishap follows by a day the pull-out of US Open holder Rafter, who has suffered for three months with shoulder tendonitis and quit the event to rest.

The two favourites have little more than a week to get fit before the start of the Open, which Rafter has won the last two years.

''I felt it on an overhead at the end of the third game of the second,'' said Sampras of his problem. ''I could feel it afterwards when he went wide to my forehand. It was deep in my hip. I didn't feel like making it worse by continuing to play.''

Rafter flew yesterday to his base in Bermuda. His defence of the Open begins a week from Monday.

Sampras apparently felt the pain when he leaped high on an overhead to take a 2-1 lead in the second set against Spadea, whom he had beaten all four times they had played.

Sampras had won his past 24 matches in a row and had not been beaten since the French Open, in the interum he took titles at Queen's, Wimbledon, Los Angeles and Cincinnati, beating Rafter last weekend.

Spadea will line up today against Frenchman Sebastien Grosjean, who ousted third-seed Gustvo Kuerten of Brazil 6-4, 6-3.

Kuerten, the 1997 French Open holder and winner of two Mercedes Super 9 crowns this year, was well off his game against world No 32 Grosjean, the hard-court finalist at Miami against Richard Krajicek in March.

The Brazilian loser committed 30 unforced errors in a match to forget. He will now head to New York to train for before the start of the US Open a week from Monday.

Holland's Jan Simerink moved into the semi-finals without any effort after Rafter's pullout. He faces the winner of a night match between fourth-seed Carlos Moya of Spain, a 1997 finalist, and 11th-seeded Nicolas Lapentti.

UNI