Davenport off to good start in Tokyo
Graf, Hingis also advance at Pan Pacific
Posted: Thursday February 04, 1999 12:32 PM
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Defending champion Davenport says the carpet surface is perfect for her. AP |
TOKYO (AP) - Top-ranked Lindsay Davenport, playing her first
singles match since the Australian Open semifinals, beat Mary Joe
Fernandez 6-4, 6-4 today in the second round of the Pan Pacific
Open.
"Starting the tournament late is always tough," Davenport
said. "When you have a bye, it's not so much a matter what day you
start on, but playing someone who has already played a match.
"And on this (carpet) surface, that's always a huge advantage.
That's why sometimes qualifiers have a big advantage."
But Davenport, the defending champion, believes the fast surface
is perfect for her powerful game.
"The surface is very different from anything we have played on
the whole year, but I find it's more probably to my advantage than
a lot of others," she said. "If I serve well and hit the ball
hard, it would be very hard for some of the players to play really
aggressively against me."
The American star advanced to a quarterfinal match Friday
against seventh-seeded Amanda Coetzer of South Africa, a 2-6, 6-1,
7-5 winner over Belgium's Els Callens.
German star Steffi Graf, seeded fifth, set up a quarterfinal
match against three-time Australian Open winner Martina Hingis,
beating Russia's Elena Lithovtseva 2-6, 7-6 (7-4), 6-2.
"When I played her in November in Philadelphia, I beat her in a
close, three-set match. So I knew it was not going to be an easy
match," Graf said. "But I think I didn't play very well today."
Hingis, the Swiss teen-ager ranked No. 2 in the world, won her
second-round match Wednesday.
In other second-round matches, sixth-seeded Anna Kournikova of
Russia beat Zimbabwe's Cara Black 6-2, 6-3; third-seeded Jana
Novotna of the Czech Republic defeated South Africa's Mariaan de
Swardt 6-2, 6-2; and eighth-seeded Natasha Zvereva of Belarus beat
American Lisa Raymond 6-3, 6-2.
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