Pete Sampras heads into the Paris Open starting Monday with a comforting thought. No matter what he does, he will return to the No. 1 ranking in tennis.
Andre Agassi, currently No. 1, won the 1994 tournament, but a recurrence of his chest-muscle injury last week at the Eurocard Open at Essen, Germany, forced him to withdraw from the Paris Open. As a result, he will lose those ATP ranking points, allowing Sampras to move up from second place.The rankings are based on the results of a player's best 14 tournament results over the last 12 months. Sampras has won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open this year, while Agassi took the Australian Open.
Sampras lost to Agassi in the quarterfinals of the Paris Open last year and thus has fewer points dropping off. So, Sampras will regain the top spot he lost to Agassi April 10.
Sampras is top-seeded at Paris, with French Open champion Thomas Muster, seeded second. Muster beat Sampras in the Eurocard Open semifinals and defeated American MaliVai Washington in the final Sunday.
Ironically, Washington was the lowest-ranked player allowed in on the original entry list for the $2.25 million Paris tournament, which has drawn a top field in search of high ranking points and money. The tournament winner gets $342,000.
Washington was ranked 49th when the entries were announced in mid-September.
Only Agassi, injured Michael Stich and Yevgeny Kafelnikov are missing from the top 15 players in the world.
Boris Becker and Michael Chang are seeded third and fourth, followed by Goran Ivanisevic, the 1993 winner, Jim Courier, Sweden's Thomas Enqvist and two-time French Open champion Sergi Bruguera of Spain.
The top 16 players get a bye in the first round. Sampras meets the winner of the Jonas Bjorkman-Arnaud Boetsch match. Boetsch lost to Washington in the Eurocard semifinals.
Muster faces the winner of an all-French match between Guy Forget, the 1991 Paris winner, and wild card invite Jerome Golmard.
Becker, troubled by an ailing back, had suggested he might skip the tournament, but said Sunday he'll participate. He re-injured his back in losing to Richard Krajicek of the Netherlands last Thursday, but said he felt better Sunday.
"I practiced all afternoon with Michael Chang without feeling any discomfort," Becker said Sunday.
Becker won the first Paris Open in 1986 and won again in 1989 and 1992.
Withdrawing from the Paris Open would have put Becker in danger of not qualifying for the Nov. 14-19 ATP Tour World Championship, where Sampras beat Becker for the title last year.
Only the top eight in the rankings qualify for the year-end final. Agassi has said he would return for that tournament.
Becker needs at least one victory in the Paris tournament to clinch a spot in the top eight. He probably would qualify even without it, since five others behind him would have to do extremely well for him to drop to ninth from his present No. 4 ranking.