Lindsay leads charge
Davenport, Seles, Pierce win Chase matches
Posted: Wednesday November 18, 1998 11:10 PM
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Davenport: "It wasn't looking too good in the first two sets. My game was pretty bad." AP |
NEW YORK (AP) -- Two days after clinching the year-end No. 1 ranking, Lindsay Davenport almost became a spectator at the season-ending Chase Championships.
Davenport was two points away from defeat when she rallied to beat Sandrine Testud of France 4-6, 7-6 (7-4), 6-0 and complete the opening round of the Chase Championships.
Earlier, fifth-seeded Monica Seles overcame an upset stomach and a stubborn Anna Kournikova of Russia 6-4, 6-3, while No. 6 Mary Pierce of France crushed South African Amanda Coetzer 6-1, 6-0.
Having escaped one French woman, Davenport next will play another, eighth-seeded Nathalie Tauziat, in the quarterfinals of this season-ending tournament.
Other quarterfinal pairings will pit Seles against Steffi Graf in a battle of former No. 1s, Pierce against No. 2 Martina Hingis of Switzerland, and Belgium's Dominique Van Roost against Irina Spirlea of Romania in a meeting of unseeded players.
"Winning when you're not playing great. Today was a great example of that," Davenport said.
How true.
With her right leg heavily bandaged, Testud showed no signs of the injury that forced her to retire from a first-round match a week ago in Philadelphia. She seemed to be in the right place at the right time to return Davenport's shots. And Testud replied with winners.
She captured the first set and led 5-4, 15-30 in the second, two points from a quarterfinal meeting with her French Fed Cup teammate. She never made it.
Davenport survived. She took the next three points with two winners and an unreturnable serve. That made it 5-5, and after the two traded service breaks, they went to the tiebreak.
"It wasn't looking too good in the first two sets," Davenport admitted. "My game was pretty bad."
Testud had one last hurrah, building a 3-1 lead in the tiebreak.
Then Davenport found the game that has taken her to No. 1 in the world.
"The whole match just turned after the tiebreaker," she said.
Seles began her match as if she was double-parked on Eighth Avenue outside Madison Square Garden. Kournikova's only point in the first three games came when the left-hander from Sarasota, Florida, double-faulted.
But after that, Seles, a former top-ranked player who is in the midst of a comeback, was locked in a fault-filled contest that neither player seemed able to win. It was an error appropriately -- a backhand service return that sailed long -- that ended the match as Seles held serve. In between, there were 10 breaks of service in the 19 games.
"I was lucky to pull it out tonight," said Seles, who has been ill since Sunday afternoon. "I wasn't sure how I am going to play. I just said, give it my best shot."
Kournikova never was able to get her game together as she continually double-faulted -- 17 in all, including five in one game. Still, she hit enough winners to reveal the talent she does have. Her groundstrokes were more crisp than those of Seles, and they frequently left Seles just standing on one side of the court, watching a winner sail past.
The 17-year-old Russian, making her Championships debut, also exploited Seles' lack of mobility, winning several points with drop shots.
But the veteran Seles, a three-time winner here in the Garden, won the points that counted. Now se has a date with Graf, who advanced into the quarterfinals on Tuesday by beating third-seeded Jana Novotna 6-7 (5-7), 6-4, 6-1.
In her match, Pierce was overpowering in every aspect of the game.
Coetzer, at 5-foot-2 one of the smallest players on the Corel WTA Tour, relies on quickness, speed and grit to overcome her lack of height. Against Pierce, none of those worked.
Pierce had the firepower from all sides, unloading huge groundstrokes and hitting winners all over the court. She took charge at the start and never gave Coetzer a chance. Pierce won the opening four games while losing only nine points.
Coetzer then rallied from a 15-40 deficit to break Pierce, the only game she won. In the entire match, Coetzer won only 26 points.
Sunday's title match will be a best-of-5 sets, the only time women play more than three sets. The winner will collect $500,000, with $250,000 going to the losing finalist.
The top eight doubles teams are also competing on the Garden's blue carpet. The doubles champions will split $200,000.
The top-seeded team of Hingis and Jana Novotna were upset Wednesday by Yayuk Basuki of Indonesia and Caroline Vis of the Netherlands 6-4, 2-6, 6-4. Hingis and Novotna had won the doubles in three of the four Grand Slam tournaments this year, the only three in which they played together.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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