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Easy outing Kournikova advances at Pan Pacific Open
Posted: Tuesday February 01, 2000 10:49 AM
TOKYO (AP) -- Fifth-seeded Anna Kournikova breezed past unseeded Anne-Gaelle Sidot of France 6-3, 6-2 Tuesday to advance to the second round of the Toray Pan Pacific Open tennis tournament. Australian Open runner-up and defending champion Martina Hingis of Switzerland, Mary Pierce and her French compatriot Nathalie Tauziat, and South African Amanda Coetzer received first-round byes. Top-ranked Lindsay Davenport, who captured her first Australian Open title by defeating Hingis, skipped the tournament because of a left hamstring strain. Davenport, the 1998 Toray champion, suffered the injury during her semifinal match against American Jennifer Capriati in Melbourne and said that it has not healed sufficiently. The other three seeds -- Sandrine Testud of France, American Chanda Rubin and Ai Sugiyama of host Japan -- play their first-round matches Wednesday. Kournikova outrallied Sidot, beating her with volleys and soft, angled shots. The 18-year-old Kournikova says she has worked hard and improved her game a lot during the past year. "Now, I'm not going in for every crazy shot, and I'm playing smarter by doing the right shots at the right time," Kournikova said. "I'll have to win my second-round match before I worry about the next one," she said of her possible encounter with Hingis in the quarterfinals. In Australia last week, Kournikova advanced to the round of 16 and lost to Davenport 6-4, 6-3. American Alexandra Stevenson also won Tuesday when her opponent, Maria Antonia Sanchez, retired with a back muscle strain with Stevenson leading 4-1 in the opening set.
"I really wanted to play my first match and win -- I mean I did win but I wanted to finish it out," Stevenson said. "This surface is actually a lot like grass but it doesn't have bad bounces, so I think I'm going to do well on this surface."
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