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by Paul Teetor
As Martina Hingis walked onto the tennis court Tuesday afternoon, little boy clutching a Super-sized soda and a giant yellow tennis-ball-on-a-string called out "Will you sign my ball after you win?"
Hingis, focused on her second-round match and comfortable in her starring role, kept going. Suddenly a fat, fifty-something man in a too-tight black T-shirt shouted "Sign it for the kid, Martina." Then he turned to his wife and said "I’ll bet she signs it after the match."
The wife smiled and said: "That white outfit looks terrific on her. You can see her arms. I like it better than that long-sleeved outfit she wore last time."
They were talking about the number one ranked female tennis player in the world, a 20-year-old wunderkind known among advertisers as the Swiss Miss. But there was no mention of her metronome groundstrokes, of her classic all-court game, and it raised the question: why exactly is women’s tennis surrounded by so much more heat, so much more buzz than men’s tennis these days?
You could feel the anticipation, the sense of celebrity alert in the air Tuesday afternoon at the estyle.com Classic when first Hingis and then Serena Williams finally made their initial appearances on the stadium court at the Manhattan Country Club. The clearest sign: the way fans felt free to engage with these one-name goddesses who have become like next-door neighbors in the 500-channel Media Age.
"We love you Martina," yelled one young blond woman in a sleeveless white tanktop. "Yeah we do love you, but get your toss more out in the court and you’ll have a better serve," added her male companion, a slickster decked out in alligator-leather loafers, a khaki-jungle outfit from Abercrombie&Banana and mirrored aviator-style sunglasses.
After three days of warm-up acts by Martina wannabes and Serena simulators, little ladies with big games like 16-year-old Cory Ann Avants from North Carolina and 20-year-old Jennifer Hopkins from Wisconsin, it was time for the queen bees to make their entrance.
Both women delivered-as-advertised, with straight set victories that were just close enough to keep the crowd entertained, first by Martina’s grace and guile, then by Serena’s incredible ripped body, sprinter’s speed and wheel-of-fire groundstrokes. Adding to the celebrity factor: Serena’s infamous father Richard Williams hung over the railing behind her, taking pictures with a huge camera. Sitting with him: football bad boy Jim Brown, the Hall-of-Fame running back considered by many experts the best runner ever.
The crowd loved the whole circus, everything about it, including the idea that they were there, that they were part of the happening scene. They made no secret of their desire to see the two favorites win and advance to play another day.
"Yeeeahhh Martina," screamed Karen Pavone of Manhattan Beach, when, after a long, tough rally with Lilia Osterloh, Hingis finally unleashed a gorgeous down-the-line backhand winner. "Great shot."
Between games, Pavone said: "These women hit the hell out of the ball and they have great rallies. They’re so much more exciting to watch than the men."
Her friend, Brenda Gillespie, said the opportunity to watch longer rallies also helps her own game.
"I get more from watching the women in terms of learning to play myself," she said.
Tennis purists the popularity of women’s tennis is due to the great tennis being displayed weekly by a six-pack of future Hall-of-Famers who all happened to show up in the same generation.
But cynics, many of them in the press corps, say the buzz surrounding the women’s tour is generated by plain old-fashioned sex appeal — check out the bare midriffs and clingy short skirts on today’s buff-body tour. Call it the Brittany Spears factor.
Armed with personal trainers, traveling coaches and high-tech racquets, these one-name wonders have made the women’s game fast enough for the 21st century, sexy enough to be hip in the post-Madonna, Playboy-is-Ok world, and edgy enough to be cool with the emerging "extreme sport" crowd.
For the first time ever, CBS has scheduled a US Open final for prime time next month. The surprise choice in a sport where the women have traditionally been viewed as the junior varsity: the women’s final, which surely will have at least one and maybe two of the marquee names in town this week.
Let’s Be Honest
The debate over the success of the women’s tour rages on, this week right here in the Beach Cities. Is the buzz coming from public fascination with players like Anna Kournikova, the blond beauty known as the single most downloaded person on the net and owner of one official website, 200 unofficial websites and zero professional tennis titles?
Or is it public fascination with the fabulous, fight-to-the death, I-hate-you-and-your-sister tennis displayed whenever the little-priss-miss, Hingis, takes on one of the we-are-family Williams sisters and their wacky-but-wise father Richard?
Is it the drama of watching Hingis cling to her ever-shrinking lead as the official number one on the computer while Venus Williams, the real number one in the locker room, slowly eats up the gap in ranking points and prepares to assume her rightful crown?
Or is it the "Sports Story of the Year" — the amazing comeback of Jennifer Capriati, 10 years after the press first anointed her as the new Chrissie?
It took a 21-year-old Stanford graduate — who grew up in Santa Monica as a beach girl and knows all about the cult of the body -- to cut through the chatter about longer rallies, more interesting personalities and great rivalries on the women’s tour.
"Let’s be honest about it. The bottom line is that people like to watch attractive women play sports," Marissa Irvin said. "A lot of guys come out to watch Anna Kournikova who are not necessarily hard-core tennis fans — and I think that’s good for the sport."
The Brittney Spears factor is at work everywhere. On the practice courts where fans gather to gawk behind fences while the girls bash balls at each other, the favored attire is the bare minimum: training bras and tight short shorts.
In the stadium court all the women wear some combination of short shorts, short dress-skirts and tank tops in wild, full-spectrum colors. The fashion parade has been led -- so far -- by the shocking red skirt Serena wore Tuesday to complement her long blond Dennis-Rodman-style braids and red-and-black sneakers.
"There are a lot more babes here than I realized there would be playing tennis," said Amir Baku, who said he had driven up from Orange County Monday morning. "But I just heard Anna isn’t going to play. I guess she got hurt or something. What a bummer, man."
The contrast with the men’s tour and its heavy-handed, trying-too-hard "New balls, please" marketing slogan couldn’t be clearer.
The women don’t need some overly obvious double entendre. They already offer a winning formula of sex appeal, great tennis and outspoken personalities, marketing a racquet version of the brainy babes that men always say they want but can’t find.
ADD Tennis
Last month the men’s tour concluded its Los Angeles stand after a week of boom-boom tennis featuring big, brawny men with big racquets hitting big serves past each other and then asking for a towel while the linespeople came up for air and the spectators yawned. The dean of local tennis writers, the LA Times’ Lisa Dillman, dubbed it "attention-deficit-disorder tennis."
To top it off, the one-sided, disappointing final featured the men’s game’s only true marquee names: Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras. Agassi destroyed Sampras, who has fallen to 12th in the ATP rankings, in less than an hour.
By contrast, the Sanex/WTA tour produced at least six marquee names — two-time defending champion Serena Williams, Lindsey Davenport, Martina Hingis, Kim Clijsters, Anna Kournikova and Monica Seles — for the .estyle Classic. It began play last Sunday, ends with the final next Sunday, and offers a total of $565,000 in prize money, with $90,000 going to the winner.
Kournikova, however, pulled out Sunday night, citing an injury suffered last week at the Carlsbad tournament. The groans of disappointment — from men and from the many lesbians who attend women’s tennis tournaments -- could be heard all over the Manhattan Country Club Monday afternoon. The news spread faster than word of Aranxa Sanchez-Vicario’s first round upset at the hands of 18-year-old French wildcard entry Virginie Razzano.
"I just heard it from the guy at the pretzel stand when I asked him when Anna was playing," Kim Hughes of Hermosa Beach said. "I can’t believe I won’t get to see her. I go to her website a lot and leave messages, but this would have been even better. You know, more personal."
By the time word got out that Anna — no need for a second name — wouldn’t be around to shake her long rope of blond hair whenever she missed a shot or to pout and smash her racquet on the court when she didn’t like a line call, it was already the second day of the bigger-than-ever, 31st version of the tournament that wandered all over southern California before it found a home at the Manhattan Country Club in 1982.
The event, part of the summer hard-court run-up to the U.S. Open later this month, expanded its field from 28 to 48 players and began first-round play on Sunday morning, giving fans an extra day of tennis to make it eight full days of world-class tournament tennis.
At its peak, the 5,234-seat stadium court was almost half-full Sunday afternoon, proving the promoters had not erred in charging for the extra day. In earlier years, the weekend had been taken up by the qualifying rounds, which are free to the public.
Hungry For More
As she lounged in the VIP box seats Sunday afternoon — the ushers were smart enough to let the seats closest to the court fill up — and watched Marissa Irvin battle a 16-year-old star-to-be named Cory Ann Avants, Melissa Barnicle of Long Beach said she appreciated the extra day of tennis.
"I can’t come up for the early rounds during the week, and by the weekend it’s usually sold out and really expensive anyway," she said Sunday afternoon. "This is great. My friends and I have watched every match today. We think this Cory Ann Avants is going to be a big star. She hits the ball beautifully."
At the peak of the day Sunday, when local favorite Irvin beat Avants in a tough three-setter, the stadium was half full, a turnout that pleased tournament officials.
"We think the attendance justified the decision to expand the tournament," Tournament Director Gus Sampras — yes, he quickly admits, he is Pete’s brother — said Monday afternoon. "It gives 20 more players a chance to prepare for the US Open, and it gives the fans the chance to see more future stars."
But Sampras does not agree that the estyle.com tournament or the WTA/Sanex tour is marketing sex appeal alone, or even that sex appeal is the catalyst that makes all the other elements work.
"I guess you could say sex appeal is a contributing factor to the women’s success right now," he said. "But I don’t think it’s number one. I think the high quality of the tennis is the most important thing. The fans know they’re going to see the same five or six girls in the quarterfinals and semifinals every week."
Venus Envy
There is no denying it: whether by luck, or the growth of training academies by individual countries or just by virtue of the athletic gods smiling down upon the game, women’s tennis has been blessed with a bounty of real champions, players who are capable of winning any tournament at any time with exciting, crowd-pleasing tennis.
Their names and their games read like a scorecard for the Hall of Fame in 20 years.
Venus and Serena Williams: The sisters from Compton have full-throated strokes that are Kinko-copies similar, but now the beads are gone from their hair and slowly their differences are emerging. Venus will be the all-time champion, the Chrissie-Martina-Steffi one-of-a-kind player who is talked about forever. Serena will be her sidekick, an extraordinary talent content, for whatever reason, to grab the spotlight only occasionally, as she did in winning the ’99 US Open. Physically, Venus is bigger and moves better at net, while Serena is more powerful from the backcourt, but also more erratic. Most of all, Venus is dominant mentally while Serena fades in and out with the mind game.
Martina Hingis: Such beautiful groundstokes. Such clever volleys. Such thoughtful strategy and tactics. Such a soft, attackable serve. In a nutshell, that has been her downfall, the cause of a two-year drought in Grand Slam titles. Also hurting her: her insistence on being a normal 20-year-old — that is to say free of her mother’s daily supervision and determined to have romances with boys.
Jennifer Capriati: The ultimate banger. She just keeps slugging away on all her shots — buggywhip forehand, Chris-Evert-style two-handed backhand, and a much-improved serve -- and climbing up the rankings. Now that she has let her talent blossom because she wants success, not because her parents, her coach and everyone else wanted it, the question is can she handle the hype and the pressure that comes with a second ticket into the fame game. Her whining about Monica Seles’ grunting after last week’s loss was not a good omen.
Lindsay Davenport: Palos Verdes’ finest is the nicest, most down-to-earth, genuine person among the elite players. She is also had to work the hardest to reach the top tier. Her main weapon is her death-ray serve, backed up by flatter-than-midsummer-TV groundstrokes and a penetrating first volley. Shedding 30 pounds and working endlessly on her fitness a few years ago transformed her from a very good player into a champion who can get to that extra shot if she has to.
Monica Seles: One of the great tragedies of modern sports. She was on her way to becoming the best ever, having won seven of the last eight Grand Slams she entered, when she was stabbed by a German madman, a crazed Steffi Graf fan, during a tournament in 1993. She lost more than two years at the peak of her career, and her game has never quite recovered. The crazy angles produced by her two-hands on both sides style, combined with her Jimmy Connors-like competitiveness, still make her a threat against anyone. But too often, as she did in the Carlsbad final against Venus last Sunday, she is stuck in a rut one level below the game’s very best -- no matter how loud or annoying her grunts.
Anna Kournikova: Currently several levels below the game’s best because of a foot injury that kept her out for six months before she reinjured it in her return last week. But when she’s healthy Anna has plenty of game: great quickness and laser-beam groundstokes that routinely paint the lines when she is playing well. But her serve is even worse than Hingis’, a totally unreliable weapon that she has no faith in when the pressure is on. And many players whisper that she is simply not focused on tennis, too caught up in the celebrity world of media, nightlife and serial romances with hockey players, pop singers and movie stars. Kournikova, meanwhile, insists she is a virgin, is not married, and is totally committed to her tennis career.
Kim Clijsters: One half of the Belgian brigade. Another banger in the Capriati mold, she hits fierce topspin from both sides and has an improving serve. A bulldog competitor just like her look-alike boyfriend, Australian teenage star Lleyton Hewitt.
Justine Henin: The other half of the Belgian brigade. Flaunts a beautiful, textbook one-handed backhand that can match power with any two-hander and gives her more reach, finesse and variety than everyone she faces. Undersized at 5-foot-6 in the age of Big Babe tennis, she will have to get stronger to go all the way to the top. Has the mental willpower to make it.
Jelena Dokic: The 18-year-old from Australia by way of Yugoslavia is another fast-forward powerhouse, an angry, Mike Tyson-type who hisses when she hits the ball. She wants to body punch you and get off the court as quick as possible. She fits the pattern of so many chasing Venus and Martina: great groundstrokes but a lot of room for improvement on the serve. Gets bonus points for having a crazy father who has been banned from the tour twice after drunken incidents. Has stayed fiercely loyal to him.
Sweet 16
Not everything about the women’s tour involves vicious rivalries, trashtalking parents, and sexy outfits.
Fans who attend the early rounds know one of the perks is being able to see stars of the future as they struggle to break through and become single-name wonders in their own right. Tennis fans love to reminisce about the time they saw a young Andre, a young Steffi, or a young Venus.
So it was noteworthy when the stadium crowd Sunday afternoon was torn between its obvious affection for Marissa Irvin, the local girl, and Cory Ann Avants, the baby-faced 16-year old with the greyhound frame and double-fisted strokes on both sides, a style that reminded fans immediately of Monica Seles.
Eventually half the crowd stayed with Irvin, while the other half adopted Avants, who endeared them with her fist-pumping and thigh-slapping whenever she won an important point.
"It’s great the way she shows her emotions," said Angel Soares of El Segundo. "She’s such a little girl, but she’s not afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve."
Avants, who turned pro right after her 16th birthday last April, almost beat Irvin, five years older and four hundred spots higher in the rankings. But even in bitter defeat she kept her composure, reined in her disappointment, and drank in the crowd’s generous applause as she walked off the court in her major tournament debut.
In the press conference after the match, she began her answer to the first question with, "Well, sir….," and went on to explain that she was "a nice little girl from Gastonia, North Carolina." She said that both her parents are teaching professionals, that she has been home schooled and is committed to getting her high school diploma, and that her goal is to be number one in the world.
She began every answer with "sir" or "maam", and as she walked out of the press tent she stopped and shook hands with every single media member, from lowly cameraman to influential columnist. The cynical pack of beat writers who travel the tour — used to dealing with big-name stars, tennis divas who barely tolerate them as a necessary evil -- were completely charmed by the unprecedented, utterly guileless gesture, this display of 19th century southern charm in a 21st century California hot-house setting.
"For her sake, I hope she doesn’t change," said one grizzled beat writer as he turned off his tape recorder.
Later that day, at the annual player’s party designed to give the public — meaning anyone connected enough to get a ticket — a chance to mix and mingle with the players, Avants was one of the few players who appeared approachable.
Taking a break from her family — she travels with her parents and grandparents as a support system — Avants said she had already gotten her first taste of the celebrity craziness that can surround the women’s tour.
"We were waiting to have dinner after the match Sunday and some man comes over to us and starts telling me how to make my serve better," she said. "It was crazy."
Then, a half hour after she and her family was seated, the man came back of offer more advice.
"I couldn’t believe it," she said. "It was flattering at first, but after a while, I was like OK, thanks."
She said she understands the buzz around the women’s tour and the debate over sex appeal versus great tennis.
"Sometimes it’s hard for the other players to watch Anna Kournikova get all that attention," she said. "But I think it all evens out eventually. If she doesn’t keep winning, she won’t get that much attention anymore."
Avants, as modest and wholesome as any 16-year-old can be in a time of rap, rock and 24/7 sex-on-demand cable channels, said she has no problem with the emphasis on sex appeal and tight, body-hugging outfits.
"I personally don’t have a problem wearing tight outfits, but I wouldn’t wear some of the outfits some of these girls wear. My feeling is if you’re comfortable in it then go for it," she said. "Most of the players today have great bodies. Anna has worked hard for that incredible body, and she should be able to flaunt it if she wants."
She described an experience at a small tournament, a $10,000 tournament that helped prepare her for the big-time tour.
"I was playing this girl and I threw up five times in the match. I didn’t think I could finish, but I finally won it in three sets," she said. "The next day, I read in the paper that the girl said she lost because I threw up so many times that it broke her concentration. I couldn’t believe it."
Welcome to the world of big-time tennis, Cory Ann. ER