he's got game; Dodie Kazanjian catches up with the fastest big man in tennis.(Marat Safin)(Biography)

Byline: Dodie Kazanjian

Marat Safin is tennis's reigning enigma, the most mercurial talent since John McEnroe. At 20, he came out of nowhere to win the 2000 U. S. Open, crushing Pete Sampras in straight sets. He

didn't win another Grand Slam until this year's Australian Open, when he beat Roger Federer, the world's current number one, in a sensational semifinal and went on to erase hometown hero Lleyton Hewitt in the final. The five years between those triumphs were marked by dazzling wins, inexplicable meltdowns, and broken rackets. At last year's French Open, he punctuated one of his more miraculous shots by dropping his shorts. "I don't know why," he said later. "I just felt like pulling my pants down."

Six-feet-four-inches tall and powerfully built, the movie-star-handsome Russian could go all the way at this year's French Open. "I have a good feeling about it," he tells me from a hotel in Valencia, Spain, where he is practicing for the slow clay at Roland Garros. "I grew up on this surface, and I think I have a chance." Wimbledon is another matter. Safin has never played well on grass. "It doesn't go with me," he says.

Born in Moscow, Safin was first drawn to soccer but was redirected to tennis by his mother, Rausa Islanova, a former tennis player who became his teacher. (She also trained Safin's younger sister, Dinara, who is ranked thirty-seventh on the women's tour.) At twelve, Safin spent a month and a half at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida. At fourteen, he was sent to live in Valencia to train. Shortly after beating Sampras and rocketing up in the tennis hierarchy (he was ranked number one for nine weeks), he moved to tax-free Monte Carlo, where he has officially lived ever since. Almost everybody, Safin included, agrees that ...