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Posted at 7:54 a.m., Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Sampras, Sanchez-Vicario elected to tennis Hall

Associated Press

NEWPORT, R.I. — Pete Sampras was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame on Wednesday.

The owner of a record 14 men's singles Grand Slam championships is joined in the 2007 class by Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, Sven Davidson and Russ Adams.

They will be inducted July 14, and Sampras will participate in an exhibition the next day.

Sampras was ranked No. 1 for a record 286 weeks, including 102 in a row from April 1996 to March 1998. He won a total of 64 singles titles, including his haul of majors: seven at Wimbledon, five at the U.S. Open and two at the Australian Open.

Sampras won the last match of his career, beating Andre Agassi in the 2002 U.S. Open final.

His singles record was 762-222, and he earned more than $43 million in prize money, a mark that still stands.

Sanchez-Vicario won three French Opens and was the first Spanish woman to win the U.S. Open singles title in 1994. In addition to those four major singles titles, she won six doubles and four mixed doubles Grand Slam championships.

She finished with 29 titles in singles, 67 in doubles. In 1995, she was ranked No. 1 in both singles and doubles.

Sampras and Sanchez-Vicario were elected in the "recent player" category. Davidson was elected in the "master player" category, and Adams, a photographer, was elected in the "contributor" category.

Davidson was the first Swedish man to win a Grand Slam title, at the 1957 French Championships, and also won the 1958 Wimbledon doubles title.