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The Chase is on Doubles partners Hingis, Kournikova will meet again
Updated: Saturday November 18, 2000 12:03 AM
NEW YORK (AP) -- Martina Hingis will have a different view of her doubles partner in the Chase Championships semifinals. They'll be facing each other across the net -- at least for part of the day. Later Saturday, they will team up as they go for the doubles title in the season-ending tournament. "We've been playing doubles together, but doubles and singles is a bit different," Kournikova said. Thursday night, it made no difference. Hingis, top-seeded and seeking to repeat her victory of 1998, began the evening with a 6-1, 6-7 (2), 6-2 victory over No. 6 Nathalie Tauziat. Kournikova followed by defeating fourth-seeded Conchita Martinez 6-4, 6-0. Then Hingis and Kournikova teamed to win their doubles semifinals, beating Lisa Raymond and Rennae Stubbs 6-4, 6-2. In the doubles title match, Hingis and Kournikova will be after their second straight season-ending title when they take on the winners of Friday's semifinal pitting Nicole Arendt and Manon Bollegraf against Els Callens and Dominique Van Roost. Kournikova has a doubles trophy from this season-ending event. But she had never won a singles match in three trips to Madison Square Garden before beating Jennifer Capriati in the opening round on Tuesday. Now she is sitting on a two-match winning streak. The 19-year-old Russian, still seeking her first professional singles tournament crown, realizes the task that she faces in playing Hingis. "You have to do a lot of things," she said. "You have to be lucky. You have to play with no mistakes. You have to create everything yourself." Against Martinez, that wasn't much of a problem. The Spanish veteran seemed content to stay on the baseline and hit looping forehands while slicing her backhand. The ball seemed to bounce right into Kournikova's power zone, and she controlled most of the points.
"I tried to play aggressively," Kournikova said. "I tried to come to the net when I could, and just make her move a lot. It is not always possible with Conchita's high balls to come to the net, but I tried, and I think that it worked well." The second set took just 25 minutes as only one game went to deuce. In the last three games of the match, Martinez won just four points, two on Kournikova's errors. "She has more patience," Martinez said of Kournikova. "She hits the ball the same, but doesn't miss as much. I was going too much for the lines and making mistakes." The 20-year-old Hingis is seeking her first major title since the 1999 Australian Open and her first victory here since 1998. She zipped through the opening set before the Tauziat, at 33 one of the oldest players on the WTA Tour, picked up her game and took a 5-3 lead in the second set. Hingis fought back to send the set into a tiebreaker, where Tauziat quickly won the first five points.
"She just picked up her game and started reading my game better. She served very well," Hingis said. "I started pushing the ball instead of taking my chances." After the French player leveled the match at one set each, Hingis jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the decisive third set. In the third set, Hingis attacked, going for winners instead of safely keeping the ball in play. On one point, pinned behind the baseline on a ball that hit in the corner, Hingis ripped a forehand down the line for a winner, choosing to go over the high part of the net instead of taking the usual crosscourt shot. Tauziat, expecting the usual, was standing in the middle of the court waiting when the ball whizzed by her for a winner. "I had to change my game a little bit to play well with the power players, and that just quickens up the game a lot," Hingis said of her forays into the net. "And you don't give the other players too much rhythm from the baseline. "You just have to make them think a little bit more, so they don't know what to expect from me." The tournament is ending a 28-year run in the United States this week and will move next year to Munich, Germany.
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