Women's tennis rising, warts and all

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Posted: Wednesday June 03, 1998 03:43 PM

After Gabriela Sabatini won the U.S. Open seven years ago, she phoned her father back in Argentina to remind him of their longstanding bet: Now that she had won a Grand Slam title, he had to give up smoking.

This was a touching moment, just the kind of stuff to humanize a splendid athlete and make her more relevant to the casual tennis fan. Only here came the big feet of a Women's Tennis Association handler, barking at a reporter who had watched the scene unf old: "You can't write that!"

Why? Because the women's tennis tour back then was bought and paid for with Virginia Slims tobacco money.

As women's tennis sits at the cusp of a prosperous new era, the WTA would do well to unlearn such past behavior. Not all the news that the sport generates is going to be sponsor-friendly. Certainly few fans are under the illusion that women's tennis -- th at seedbed of abusive fathers, predatory coaches and other dysfunctional behavior -- is some Ozzie and Harriet family in the suburbs of the sports world.

And none of the four teen sensations currently on the tour are without their warts. Martina Hingis swaggers around as No. 1 with an attitude that borders on the arrogant. Anna Kournikova plays to the hilt the sexpot role the media have assigned to her, ev en though she's not yet of age. The Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, derive their psychological edge from flouting the stuffy values of the tennis establishment.

This may not be sporting or right, but it is good copy. Compelling personalities alone won't carry a sport through a cluttered media marketplace. It takes personalities interacting with each other, for good or for ill, to really snare and sustain the publ ic's interest.

It wasn't any sudden affection for figure skating that gave that sport a huge boost four years ago, it was the Tonya and Nancy saga. Women's tennis would do well to let its teens be teens, and let us watch them grow, with all their foibles and false steps , into full-fledged women.

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