Sampras saunters into quarters

With rain restricting play to the covered Centre Court, the world number 47 led Sampras on a merry song and dance for a while, but Sampras came through 7-6 (11-9), 6-4, 6-4.

All four of his matches have ended in three sets and most of them a lot quicker than the two hours and seven minutes it took to beat Arazi.

Also through to the quarter-finals are number four seed Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden, who beat Byron Black of Zimbabwe 6-2, 6-1, 6-4. The Swede plays number six seed Petr Korda, who saw off Frenchman Cedric Pioline 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3.

Slovakia’s Karol Kucera beat Richard Fromberg 6-2, 3-6, 6-2, 7-5 to reach the quarter-finals where he plays Sampras.

Fromberg, unseeded like Kucera, was trailing by a break in the fourth set but evened it up before having his service decisively broken in the 12th game.

With compatriot Karina Habsudova, Kucera won the Hopman Cup team event earlier this month. He then won the men’s title at the Sydney International, a tournament won last year by 1997 open runner-up Carlos Moya of Spain.

In the tough women’s battle, number two seed Lindsay Davenport crushed Romanian 15th seed Ruxandra Dragomir 6-0, 6-0. Her quarter-final opponent will be Venus Williams, heavily backed by the bookies, who beat Patty Schynder of Switzerland 6-4, 6-1 in 54 minutes and insisted she had no faults to correct.

Sampras admitted he was surprised by the live-wire game of Arazi, who knocked out Australian 15th seed Mark Philippoussis in the second round and had a set point against the defending champion.

"I was surprised by the way he served a lot of aces, a lot of service winners. I thought I was hitting some big shots. I had him on the ropes, and he came up with some huge winners."

Sampras said he could see former number one Andre Agassi looming as the main challenger from the other half of the draw. Agassi, who has made a stunning comeback at the Open, plays Alberto Berasategui of Spain in his fourth round tomorrow.

Venus Williams stormed into the last eight of the tight battle for the women’s title and insisted she has no weaknesses to worry about.

Meticulous preparation over the past year with her father and coach Richard Williams is starting to pay dividends for the brash youngster, who lost to world number one Martina Hingis in the final of last year’s US Open but beat her last week in Sydney.

Williams set up match point with the fastest ace of any woman in the tournament so far, a sizzling 184 kph, then put the game away at love with a backhand down the line well out of Schnyder’s reach.

"I’ve been working on that serve since November," Williams said. "For the first time in tournament play, I served well. And I made up my mind to go to the net. I have to make it one of my goals to get there and stop beinglazy."

Davenport thought her 48 minute demolition of Dragomir had been her first without losing a game. And she admitted it was not ideal preparation for her quarter-final with Williams.

Davenport said, "Venus hits the ball a lot harder than anybody I’ve played against so far this tournament. So I’ll definitely have to practise tomorrow and tell my coach to crank it up a bit," said Davenport.

"It’s going to be an extremely tough match on Tuesday. There are still a couple of doubters of my game out there, but I’ll be trying to make it to the semis."

Only Centre Court matches were able to be played as rain wrecked scheduling on outside courts following a heavy rainstorm early today and lingering rain throughout the day.