NEW YORK -- Beaming like a laser, Gustavo Kuerten's 12th ace clipped the intersection of the service lines, the fabled "T," and Marat Safin shook his head in disbelief.

	Marat Safin wasn't close in losing 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 to Gustavo Kuerten on Friday.

Safin is the one whose serves are usually so sublime they sometimes seem to evaporate into thin air. It is the Russian, whose hard, hard-court game should, based on the cold numbers, leave Kuerten's soft, spinning clay-court game in the red dust of Roland Garros. So forgive him, if he was mildly stunned when Kuerten cleaned and spit-shined his quirky clock Friday.

Thus, the second-seeded man here at the U.S. Open -- the one who won the tournament in 2000 and reached the semifinals a year ago -- was sent packing, presumably back home to Monte Carlo. The 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 score failed to adequately portray the scope of the result.

"He played one of his best matches. He was much better today than me, definitely," Safin allowed. "In the third set ... I had no chance to return his serve."

Of course, any time Grand Slam singles champions meet, there's no such thing as a massive upset. And, lest we forget, Kuerten has finished No. 2, No. 1 and No. 5 the past three years in the ATP rankings. No one -- not Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Lleyton Hewitt or Safin -- can match that record. It was Safin who dueled with Kuerten in the later stages of the 2000 season for the world No. 1 vacated by Sampras and Agassi, only to lose the top spot to Kuerten at the year-end championship.

"For me, I could say maybe this is the happiest day for me this year," Kuerten said. "I beat the No. 2 in the world. Was the best win for me on this stage."

Kuerten has won the French Open three times (1997 and 2000-2001), but his results on hard courts have been historically uneven. His first of two hard-court titles came two years ago at Indianapolis -- and he beat Safin in the final by the breadth of a third-set tiebreaker.

Kuerten won at Cincinnati last year and entered the U.S. Open as the first South American top seed since Pancho Segura in 1944. He made it to the quarterfinals for the second time in three years, losing to Yevgeny Kafelnikov. Kuerten won six tournaments in 2001 and finished the year ranked No. 2 behind Hewitt, the young Australian.

This year has been a disaster for Kuerten.

He lost to Julien Boutter in the first round of the Australian Open and then underwent arthroscopic hip surgery in February. He missed two months. He reached the Round of 16 at the French Open, but lost to eventual champion Albert Costa in straight sets. Between the French Open and the U.S. Open, Kuerten has played in only four tournaments in three months. Mostly, he has been rehabbing and honing his game on the practice court.

Kuerten got to the quarters in Los Angeles before losing to Agassi in three sets, but didn't get past the first round in either Toronto and Cincinnati. He actually retired in Toronto trailing Andrei Pavel 5-7 when his hip began to act up.

There is still occasional flare of pain in Kuerten's right hip, but this is the final Grand Slam of the year and, as he observed, everyone is playing hurt. Safin was suffering from what he termed a cracked rib that was sustained when he was practicing a few weeks ago in Indianapolis. Safin said it bothered him particularly when he moved into his forehand, but declined to take a pain-killing shot. The fact that Safin was extended to five sets in a four-hour, 31-minute first-round match with Nicolas Kiefer couldn't have helped his disposition.

Because Kuerten's season has been so dismal, he went from being the top seed here a year ago to being unseeded entirely. That is why he crossed paths with Safin so early in the tournament.

"In this situation, he was much more favored than me," Kuerten said. "I had nothing to lose."

And he played that way, winning each set with a break of Safin's serve and displaying an increasingly irresistible serve of his own. Safin failed to break Kuerten even once and had 35 unforced errors, compared to 24 for Kuerten.

With Safin serving in the 11th game of the third set, Kuerten mis-hit a backhand service return off the frame of his racket. It looped over the charging Safin and dropped, appropriately, just inside the baseline.

"Even with a frame, everything was inside the court," Safin said. "He hit with the frame, it was perfect. What can you do about it?

"He's hungry. He wants to come back. He wants to win matches. He was inspired. Let's see if he can play this week during all the two weeks. He can play a good match, but let's see how good he can be."

For Kuerten, it's a little early to be talking about playing seven matches in two weeks.

"I wouldn't say it's been too much frustrated, but it's been a lot tougher than, you know, than other years for me. I try to prepare myself for two or three tournaments. There was the French Open, now here.

"It's like this: It's still little soon, but I think I can -- I manage to just push myself harder in the right weeks."

Greg Garber is a senior editor at ESPN.com.