PARIS -- The one guy had won 711 matches on the pro tour, the other zero. The one guy had 182 Grand Slam victories (not to mention his all-time record 13 championships), the other zero. The one guy had won 29 career five-set marathons, the other zero. The one guy has been called the best tennis player who ever lived; a few months ago the other lost to a 45-year-old fellow in the Waikoloa Challenger, whatever that is.

Whatever, whichever and whoever that "other" was across la terre battue on Tuesday -- it turned out to be a Parisian homeboy named Cedric Kauffman -- Pete Sampras surely wondered whyever he was struggling so pitifully again to survive not merely in the French Open but in the first round of the French Open. Sampras had lost at this stage here in 1995 to the immortal Gilbert Schaller and again last May to Mark Philippoussis. But at least he knew what Philippoussis looked like. This year's other looked something like a mini Boris Becker (Mini B?) with his pallid features and strawberry beard. "More like a rabbit to me," Sampras disagreed. "At times out there on the clay I wished I was playing Boris."

That's basically because after 12 seasons of digging up the dirt at Roland Garros, Sampras still doesn't grasp the finer points of competing on the copper stuff -- the structuring of points, the gritty effort, the patience and thought and creativity demanded by the slow stuff. Pistol Pete has the will, just not the way, and foundering along in a comedy of (86 unforced) errors, he should have lost still another Open opener. That he persevered, 6-3, 4-6, 6-2, 3-6, 8-6, was due mostly to his ability to hold serve ... not to mention his nerve, especially on the trio of match points against him in the ninth and 10th games of the final set.

"I had a picture in my mind: win the point and then what should I do? Lift my arms or get down on my knees?" said Kauffman, who despite the hilarity of the occasion is not from either line of comedians that produced Cedric or Andy. Instead: "It didn't happen, but I'll wake up tomorrow and feel fine."

Easy for El Ced to have said. But what about those bluegrass fanatics who will be severely wounded that this is the second major event in two months -- the NCAA basketball tournament being the other -- in which Kentucky got punked by SoCal? As it turns out, Kauffman, 25, is a former Wildcat who emigrated from his home outside Paris to a tennis academy in Florida and then to four years at the University of Kentucky in Lexington -- "The Pitino years; yes, I am a basketball fan," he said. In fact, that's where his career-best result was obtained when he reached the semifinals of a satellite event. Since then his pro career has consisted of precisely two matches on the big circuit, which is probably why, during his warmup with Sampras, "everything was kind of blurry, the stadium? Beause I usually see [Sampras] on TV. I thought it was still a TV screen."

No wonder. Even those familiar with Sampras know him as a sometimes bigger-than-screen-life Ellay kid who grew up to not only dominate tennis but win the hearts of a couple of Hollywood semi-starlets: his former actress squeeze, Kimberly Williams, and his current actress wife, Bridgette Wilson, who was on the scene glowing right there in the warm Paris evening just as she has done in such classics as House On Haunted Hill and Love Stinks.

In truth, though, the man of Bridgette's house truly stunk up a clay joint once again; in the run-up to Paris, Pete lost first-rounders to Harel Levy in Rome and Alex Calatrava in Hamburg. Living on borrowed time, Sampras next plays the veteran dirt-kicker of Andorra, Spain's own Ricardo Eduardo Mercado Galo Blanco Diaz Perez Arrabiata Sanchez Martinez (only kidding, it's just Galo Blanco Diaz) whose name is not nearly as long and complicated as his matches.

Hold dinner, Bridge, and pray for some six-loves.

Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.