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Remember us? Older generation marches into women's semifinals
Posted: Thursday October 14, 1999 08:53 PM
PARIS (AP) -- They were teen-agers in 1989 and playing in French Open semifinals. Ten years later, Steffi Graf, Monica Seles and Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario are going at it again. All three, 11 French Open titles among them, advanced to the semifinals Tuesday, along with top-ranked Martina Hingis. "It is definitely a big achievement for us as veterans, though every time it gets harder," said Sanchez-Vicario, a three-time French champion, after beating Austria's Sylvia Plischke. Graf's 6-1, 6-7 (7-5), 6-3 win over Lindsay Davenport was the best match of the women's quarterfinals. The first set took just 23 minutes. Then Davenport dug in, winning the second set in a tiebreaker and forcing a final set. Graf, a five-time champion in Paris, seemed to be breezing into the final four when she won the first set with a deft backhand drop shot that Davenport scrambled in vain to reach. But in the fourth game of the second set the match turned. Trailing 2-1, Davenport took heart after saving a break point in a close game of three deuces. She went on to win the tiebreaker 7-5 with a backhand volley. Graf broke in the fourth and sixth games of the final set to take a 5-1 lead, but again Davenport wasn't finished, breaking at love and then holding serve. In the next game, Davenport saved two match points. But on the third, she couldn't handle Graf's serve. "On clay, experience helps," Graf said. The other three semifinalists didn't have to work as hard. Sylvia Plischke beat Sanchez-Vicario at the recent Italian Open, but there would be no repeat Tuesday. "Today was completely different," the 27-year-old Spaniard said. "I played really well from the beginning, trying to stop her being in front, attacking the ball. I learned a lesson from Rome." Sanchez-Vicario returned whatever the Austrian could throw at her. Down 2-1 in the second set, Plischke twice missed what should have been winners. Her confidence sank, and the defending champion went on to win 6-2, 6-4. Seles, who plays Graf in the semifinals, said her 6-1, 6-4 victory against Conchita Martinez was tougher than the score suggested. "I felt my shots were not going anywhere," Seles said. "I told myself, `Hang in there, there are going to be some long points, just run for every ball.'" Hingis lost the first two games against Barbara Schwartz, but stormed back to win the next seven, and the match. Schwartz beat Venus Williams in the fourth round but made far too many errors to trouble the No. 1 player. Her double fault at match point summed up the day. The Austrian hit more winners than Hingis (27 to 23) but made 31 errors. Hingis had just 13 in the entire match. Hingis' victory had perfect symmetry: 6-2, 6-2, exactly 30 minutes per set. "I almost didn't miss anything today," Hingis said. "I played clever. Otherwise, I would have been shut off the court."
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