Now It's A New Ball Game
The Sunday Age
Sunday January 21, 2001
SERENA Williams got an awful scare. At one stage, she had her head in her hands, wanting it all to end. ``It was too terrible - I just couldn't take it," she said. Nothing she encountered in the first week of the Australian Open would have made her heart skip as many beats as the night a while ago when she and sister Venus first saw The Exorcist.
The Williams sisters, Martina Hingis, Lindsay Davenport and Monica Seles are all routinely through to the second week of the tournament. All were hot yesterday, but none were bothered.
Only Venus Williams has dropped even a set thus far, and that was on day one. Since, she has hitched up and stitched up, and her game is tighter, too. Hingis, never one to let anything come unstuck, has lost just nine games.
This is always the world order in women's tennis. It has more depth, characters and glamor than ever before, but ultimately, it comes down to the same handful of players. The elite is bigger, but still an elite. The tournament does not begin in earnest until the second week.
This is only to be expected, said Serena.
``You should just go out there and beat the people you're supposed to beat in a timely fashion and a timely manner," she said. Venus varied the theme. ``It is like two tournaments. The first week is more possibly dangerous because you're playing lower-ranked players," she said. ``The second week is when you really have to be ready to play."
Women's tennis is predictable even in its unpredictability. The only top-flight players to disappear from the draw this week were the two flakiest, Conchita Martinez and, yesterday, Mary Pierce.
Pierce reached variously for her heavily bandaged thigh, her shoulder and finally for her eye drops, but never for the stars. She was beaten in straight sets by Argentinian Paula Suarez, ranked 33rd. At match's end, she spent longer signing autographs than her conqueror. She has more spare time than her now.
None of yesterday's matches gave us much of a clue to the likely winner of this year's Open. But we did learn that Venus' favorite color was blue, but is now army green, that she didn't vote in the US election because she is a Jehovah's Witness and that although she is studying fashion, it is primarily as a hobby.
``I don't want to work that hard after tennis," she said. Incidentally, her defeat of Czech Denisa Chladkova took her 51 minutes. ``It was very hot," she said. ``I didn't want to make my stay too long." Her winning score was 6-4, 6-1.
We also learned that no one will dare to go the movies with the Williams sisters. ``We're the only people in the theatre that scream and laugh and cry; we're just way too emotional," said Serena. She was more animated on the subject than she had been on a court, where the heat and blustery north wind had made her match against Thailand's Tamarine Tanasugarn something of a chore. Serena said it was so hot that she could hardly move her feet. Nevertheless, she won 6-1, 6-4.
Hingis was detained 71 minutes in beating France's Virginie Razzano 7-5, 6-1. Seles and Davenport had won through on Friday.
The other remaining seeded players are Anna Kournikova, Amanda Coetzer, Jennifer Capriati, Amelie Mauresmo and Kim Clijsters.
Coetzer and Mauresmo both won in straight sets yesterday, over Germany's Marlene Weingartner and Croatia's Iva Majoli respectively. Kournikova, Capriati and Clijsters were already through. Clijsters might as well stay here for as long as she can; she is in good form.
The next rank of women players remaining carry at least some prospect of perpetrating an upset.
In descending order of ranking, they are: Belgian Justine Henin, who is riding a 13-match winning streak and now plays Seles; Suarez, Pierce's conqueror, now deeper into a grand slam than ever before, and who now plays Coetzer. Italy's Grande, who yesterday put the last Australian out of the tournament, and for her troubles now plays Hingis; Marta Marrero of Spain, just 18, who has yet to meet a seed, but now gets Capriati; and Germany's Barbara Rittner, 27, an 11-year veteran of the tour, who now confronts Kournikova. Today, a new tournament begins.
© 2001 The Sunday Age