Older women staging revival
Posted: Saturday November 14, 1998 03:41 PM
What's the deal with women's tennis these days? Where have all the teenagers gone? It doesn't seem five minutes ago that we were talking about a new era in the women's game, in which a birthdate earlier than 1979 put you beyond the pale.
Hingis was queen. The Williams girls, Venus and Serena, were ladies-in-waiting. And as for the picture perfect Anna Kournikova, well surely she was the poster child for a budding No. 1. Suddenly though it's all change.
A look at the rankings as the season-ending Chase Championship approaches, reveals a draw largely dominated by relative oldies. Other than the 18-year-old Hingis, none of the seeds are teens. In fact following the withdrawal of Venus Williams with a knee injury, the only other teen representaives in the whole draw besides the Swiss Miss, are the erratic Kournikova and the unproven Patty Schnyder. Both girls are regarded as extreme long shots for the title.
The paucity of serious teenage challengers at the Chase, is of course just a reflection of the way it's been all year. The golden oldies, who many had written off, in fact claimed two of the four Grand Slams. Jana Novotna earning a long-awaited Wimbledon title at the ripe old age of 29. And the Spanish veteran, Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, won her fourth French title at a positively geriatric 26 years of age.
Add to the above the re-emergence of 24-year-old Monica Seles, who'll enter the Chase ranked 6th in the world, and the late run of Steffi "the queen of the comeback" Graf, and it's certainly been a year in which age has once again become no barrier.
What's more of course many people say the standard of women's tennnis has never been better. Women's tournaments can now command as much attention, if not always prize-money, as the men's draw.
The days when the women's tour was dominated by one player or two players -- Court/King, Evert/Navratilova, Graf/Seles, have given way to a more exciting mood of uncertainty. Hingis is no longer walking over everyone as she did last years. Any one of the top 16 players feels she has a chance against the world's best, and even those immediately outside the accepted elite have proven that on their day, an upset is always possible.
So everything old is new again, which is a healthy state of affairs for the women's game. Age after all is just a state of mind.
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