An unusual winter storm has delayed the final of the State Farm Women's Classic. After a week of beautiful weather with daytime temperatures at times approaching 80 degrees, the tournament ran into some bad luck on Sunday. Believe it or not, the Phoenix area has not received this much rain at once since September of last year. Rain began falling on Saturday night causing the last semifinal doubles match to be postponed. Showers continued to fall on Scottsdale Sunday morning and after several failed attempts to dry the Stadium Court the Hingis/Davenport match was pushed to Monday morning, 10am local time. Unfortunately, the weather forecast for Monday is no better, as a second wave of storms is expected to head into the desert from the West Coast.

Both Davenport and Hingis were seen outside the player's lounge checking out the weather. During a brief break in the rain, Hingis journeyed over to a fairly wet side court to hit some serves with mother-coach, Melanie Molitor. Davenport was less then enthusiastic to get the match underway today. Apparently, both players had been watching The Weather Channel and did not really want to start the match when it appeared that it would be impossible to finish. Davenport spent some time chatting with Mary Pierce and later was joined by Mary Joe Fernandez, on hand as an ESPN commentator.

As far as stats go, Davenport leads the series with Hingis by a 10-7 margin (6-4 on hard courts). Davenport has won the last four meetings, including three recent finals at Philadelphia, Chase Championships, and this year's Australian Open. The last time the two met before a final was the 1997 US Open semifinals won by Hingis. Davenport is competing in her fifth consecutive Tour final and is off to a 13-1 start to the 2000 season, losing only to Amelie Mauresmo in Sydney. Hingis is 15-2 thus far in 2000 and Scottsdale is her third finals appearance of the year.

Once the weather clears, one of the players will have a very busy schedule of three matches. As noted above, the last semifinal was rained out Saturday night. This was a doubles match consisting of all four singles semifinalists -- Hingis/Pierce vs. Davenport/Kournikova. The winner of that match will advance to finals facing Black/Selyutina. The schedule for Monday is Hingis vs. Davenport, followed by a first round match of the Franklin Templeton Classic between Andrew Ilie vs. Nicolas Lapentti, followed by the completion of the doubles semifinals (Hingis/Pierce lead 4-2, 15-15), followed by the women's doubles final.

Unfortunately, the weather did not improve on Monday. Rain continued to fall overnight and non-stop during the day. The scheduled doubles matches were cancelled at 12:30pm local time, while three hours later the singles final was officially abandoned. Hingis and Davenport each take home approximately $43,000 finalist money, and will each earn finalist computer points for the tournament. Despite the soggy end to the event, Hingis and Davenport said that they enjoyed playing in Scottsdale and would hopefully be back to finish the job next year -- that is, if the weather allows!