PARIS, MAY 21: When the world's top-ranked players Pete Sampras and Martina Hingis continue their Grand Slam bid and launch their French Open campaigns on the slow red clay courts at Roland Garros here next week, they will have had practically no matchplay preparation on the world's most demanding surface.

Sampras, 25, and staging his eighth quest to win the only major title to elude him, has failed to win a single match on clay since he arrived in Europe last month.

A first-round defeat at Monte Carlo, where he was beaten in three sets by Sweden's Magnus Larsson, was followed by another immediate loss in Rome where the American went down to compatriot Jim Courier.

Meanwhile Hingis, the 16-year-old Swiss prodigy who is unbeaten on the women's tour since the start of the season, has not even faced an opponent on a clay court. She has been nursing the knee injury incurred when she was thrown from a horse on April 21.

But despite their lack of preparation, neither Sampras nor Hingis are brooding over their misfortunes.

Sampras, who had hoped to make use of a last chance to tune up his matchplay on the surface least-suited to his serve-and-volley style at this week's World Team Championships in Dusseldorf, saw those plans go awry as he was forced to withdraw with a thigh strain.

Yet he shrugged off his recent setbacks. ``I don't think we should read too much into my defeats. Last year I hardly had any clay court tennis behind me when I came to Paris but I still reached the semi-finals,'' he said.

Sampras, who was pushing himself through a punishing practice session at Roland Garros just 24 hours after losing in Rome, added: ``I don't need to play two months on clay to get ready for the French Open.''

The world number-one, who has already collected nine Grand Slam tournament titles and who had to reorganise his early season programme after sustaining a wrist injury, will be particularly motivated in Paris. A triumph at Roland Garros will make him the first player to win all four major tournaments since his boyhood idol Rod Laver completed the feat in the sixties.

Laver, of course, twice collected all four crowns in the same year by notching up historic Grand Slams in 1962 and 1969.

If Sampras wins the French Open, he will be halfway down the road to doing the same thing since he won the Australian Open back in January.

``To win in Paris would be a dream come true,'' said Sampras, adding: ``Obviously it would mean more to me than anything else right now. I still think I'm capable of winning it. It's a case of adapting to the conditions, staying back more and coming in on the right ball.''

Hingis, the youngest-ever player to top the women's rankings, has been busy rewriting the record books over the past twelve months but that has been child's play compared to trying to come to terms with inactivity in recent weeks.

Usually the Czech-born Swiss teenager, who was named after Martina Navratilova, packs her time off court horseriding, skating, swimming and swimming.

But after being thrown from a friend's horse and undergoing arthroscopic surgery to her damaged knee, Hingis was ordered to take a complete rest.In fact she only started serious training with coach and mother Melanie Molitor this week and she will need the green light from Austrian specialist Dr Christian Schenk who was in charge of her knee operation before commiting herself to a strenuous two weeks on the demanding surface.

Schenk, however, is expected to give her the nod, and despite her recent lay-off she will be a firm favourite to win.

Hingis, whose favourite surface is clay, won the French junior title in 1993 and 1994, and although she was beaten in the third-round of the senior event twelve months ago by big-hitting American Lindsay Davenport, everything she has touched since has turned to gold.

She became the youngest-ever Wimbledon champion when she joined forces with experienced Helena Sukova of the Czech Republic to win the women's doubles. And she then became the youngest Grand Slam singles champion this century by triumphing in Australia in January.

But if Sampras and Hingis have had problems with their Roland Garros build-up so have their main rivals. (see box: Out-of-form challengers)Sampras' main threat is consequently expected to come either from Chile's rising star Marcelo Rios, winner at Monte Carlo and finalist at Rome, or from one of the army of Spanish clay-court specialists.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.