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by Traci Tyson This tournament promised to be exciting with eight of the top ten players entered and a rich early qualifying entrance list, but it got off to a shaky start. Injury hit the main draw in the form of 2000 French Open champion Mary Pierce pulling out with an elbow injury. The qualifying draw lost names like Corina Morariu, Maggie Maleeva, Mirjana Lucic and Magdalena Gryzbowska as well as Meghann Shaughnessy and Cara Black, who were tied up in the doubles semifinal and final, respectively, at Bank of the West. The #1 seed in qualifying, American Kristi Brandi, lost in the second round to a fiery Meilen Tu. Another standout, Najedja Petrova from Russia, was quite impressive before losing in the final round to the #2 seed, Anne Kremer. Tu, Kremer, Tatiana Panova and Nicole Pratt were the final four that made it into the main draw. Monday's schedule consisted of a few final qualifying matches and a few main draw matches. Nathalie Dechy took out her compatriot, Anne-Gaelle Sidot, who made only a horrible 27% of her first serves in the match. Next up was Dominique Van Roost taking on Ai Sugiyama in what looked to be a quick trounce with a 6-2 first set until Ai stepped up her level of play to force a tiebreaker in the second set. Van Roost was never in danger in the tiebreak and went on to win it 7-4. Sugiyama, a crowd favorite in San Diego, had provided stinging upsets in the last two years of this event,beating Steffi Graf in three sets in 1998 and throughly demolishing Mary Pierce in the first round last year. Van Roost was very happy with her win and confident from her recent improved play, but she quickly came down to earth with a meeting set with Martina Hingis in the second round. The afternoon brought an entertaining, fiercely competitive match between veteran doubles team Nicole Arendt and Manon Bollegraf and the team of Amanda Coetzer and semi-retired veteran Lori McNeil. I was very impressed with McNeil's fitness level despite her semi-retired status. She may be a step slower, but she was very effective at the net. Coetzer and McNeil fought off their opponents and won 7-5 in the third. The featured match of the evening was Jennifer Capriati vs. Elena Likhovtseva. Both are players who have been somewhat off form lately, but I was encouraged by the first seven games of the first set. It was thrilling, heart stopping tennis with each game going to deuce multiple times with the server facing numerous break points. It was on serve until Capriati was serving at 3-4 and apparently forgot how to serve. She tossed in several of her ultimate ten double faults of the match and was broken by Likhovtseva. Capriati would not win another game in the match. What had been a very competitive match turned into a farce as Elena took the next seven games rather quickly. When asked what happened in the match, Jennifer said she felt like she was hitting against a backboard. I give Elena full credit for playing a solid match, but Jennifer really needs to take responsibility for her poor play that had some suggesting a tank job. Jennifer's night only got worse when a reporter asked if she had put on weight recently. She stared a hole in the male reporter and said, "I don't think that is very relevant right now. Have you?", which basically signaled the end of the press conference. Tuesday started with an upset of Anke Huber by Amy Frazier, who had taken Venus Williams to three sets the previous week at Bank of the West. I didn't see this match, but it was all Frazier in a one-sided first set with a competitive second set going to Frazier in a tiebreak. In other first round action, qualifier Nicole Pratt beat a sluggish Fabiola Zuluaga while Amanda Coetzer came back from a first set deficit to defeat Lisa Raymond 4-6, 7-5, 6-1. Another mild upset was Austrian Barbara Schett going down to the Russian qualifier, Tatiana Panova, in three tough sets. Meilen Tu continued her inspired play and eliminated Elena Dementieva in a three-setter. Nathalie Tauziat dispatched Anne Kremer in straight sets and Conchita Martinez beat an out of sorts Kim Clijsters. The best match of the day was between doubles partners, Sandrine Testud and Chanda Rubin. Chanda came out firing and took the first set easily. It looked like she was cruising to a win until Sandrine fought back to take the second set 7-5. Chanda seemed to run out of gas in the third set. Sandrine looked relieved when she won match point and the partners exchanged a hug at the net at the conclusion of the match. Martina Hingis continued her intimidation of Dominique Van Roost in the afternoon's featured match. Dominique could not get it going in the first set, but she gave Martina a fight in the second set, ultimately losing in a tiebreak. The evening match pitted "don't hate me because I'm beautiful" Anna Kournikova verses the curtseying hometown girl, Alexandra Stevenson. I did not see this match, but Anna had no problem dismissing Stevenson 6-2, 6-3. First round singles losers, Kim Clijsters and Ai Sugiyama, took out Tina Krizan and Barbara Schett in the evening doubles match. Earlier in the day, underdogs Jennifer Capriati and Amy Frazier had surprised the French team of Nathalies, Tauziat and Dechy. Wednesday saw the arrival of Monica Seles into the main draw and the exit of #2 Lindsay Davenport. The day started off with Amy Frazier continuing her hot streak by defeating the up and coming Frenchwoman, Nathalie Dechy. Next up was Monica Seles, who was stretched uncomfortably to a 7-5, 7-5 win over little Meilen Tu, who had a great run at the tournament. Conchita Martinez FINALLY defeated Australian spitfire Nicole Pratt after two rain delays and some of the longest games I've ever seen in professional tennis. No lie, the first three games of the third set lasted almost 40 minutes. Pratt has quite a temper and displayed it for all to see in the third set. She repeatedly questioned calls and asked the umpire to overrule on far baselines and even went so far as to ask the offending lines woman, "How much are you getting paid to make these calls, lady?" To her credit, she did offer a handshake to Conchita and the umpire at the end of the insufferable match. Next up was the main event of the day, Anna Kournikova vs. Lindsay Davenport. Lindsay always enjoys a great following at La Costa as she is from just up the road in Laguna Beach, but on this occasion the crowd was split between Davenport and Kournikova. Kournikova got off to a rocky start with a bunch of errors to lose the first set 6-2. Even though she was winning pretty easily, Lindsay had absolutely no spark whatsoever. When Anna fought back to take the second set, Lindsay barely gave up a fight. I don't know if I've ever seen Anna play so aggressively though, really going after her returns and stepping in to some incredible backhands down the line. Lindsay was way down in the third set and fought back to 5-5, but Anna won the decisive break to go up 6-5 and closed it out with a yell, clenched fist and a little hop of joy. Lindsay seemed rather resigned to losing and had no explanation for her lackluster play. She said something was missing in her game, but she couldn't pinpoint that elusive missing ingredient. The evening wrapped up with a delayed match after the afternoon crowd was moved out following the lengthy battle between Kournikova and Davenport. That didn't seem to matter as Venus Williams decided to get it over quickly with a sound defeat of Amanda Coetzer. It really shouldn't be legal to make poor little Amanda return those booming serves. She was bageled in the first set, but she ran down a lot of balls in the second set and managed to keep the match entertaining. After a particularly long rally that saw Amanda covering more ground than kudzu in Alabama, Coetzer simply kept running after losing the point and flopped in an empty umpire's chair. She milked the moment for all it was worth (all the while vigorously trying to resume oxygen flow to her lungs) and gave the crowd quite a laugh. Venus was all business from the start and said she felt pretty good about her match except for some momentary mind wandering in the second set. I couldn't attend the Thursday sessions, but they were pretty uneventful except for the big upset of Martina Hingis by red-hot Amy Frazier. Evidently, Hingis never got into the match and went down in two sets. Other matches saw easy wins for Nathalie Tauziat over Elena Likhovtseva, Testud over Panova and Venus Williams over Conchita Martinez, all in straight sets. On Friday, Anna Kournikova broke her winless streak against Nathalie Tauziat and made the semifinals for the second week in a row. In a similar match to that against Davenport, Anna lost the first set and came back to win the second and third of a surprisingly competitive match. Anna got the last word after Tauziat had some interesting comments about Kournikova in her tell-all book about the WTA. The best match of the day was that evening as Sandrine Testud tried to knock off Monica Seles and nearly did so. She came out strong and took the first set 6-4 and then Monica took complete control of the second set to win it 6-2. The third set was full of excitement and could have gone either way. In the end, Testud got a few bad calls, Seles made some great shots and the match was settled with a tense tiebreak. Monica squeaked out the win 8-6, but both players got huge standing ovations with each leaving the court drenched in sweat. The semifinals started off with a whimper. In what was expected to be a great rematch of their great match the week before when Frazier had given Venus a scare, it ended up being a route with Venus winning a fairly routine 6-2, 6-3 match. When asked how tough that serve was coming at her, Frazier could only manage a nervous laugh and say, "It's pretty tough." Venus was in rare form during her post match conference and seemed ready to go another round. When asked if anything especially nice had happened to her since winning the singles championship at Wimbledon, Williams pondered for a moment and sheepishly offered, "Winning the DOUBLES championship at Wimbledon!" When given a picture of her little doggie, Pete, by this reporter, she squealed with glee and immediately kissed the picture! She thanked me profusely for the photo of the little pooch and said, "He loves to have his picture taken!" Not quite the imposing giant she had been on court mere moments before. The second semifinal was more competitive, but still a bit of a letdown. I had watched Kournikova practice for over an hour just hours before her match with Monica Seles and remarked to someone that she was gonna be burnt out before the match started. It seemed to be a correct statement as Anna came out flat against Seles. Her serve failed her and she hit many careless errors to go down 6-3 in the first set. She did come to life somewhat in the second set and forced a tiebreak, but Monica fully controlled the tiebreak, giving up only two points on her way to victory. Seles played a solid match, even though her own serve deserted her at times. She had major problems with her toss all week. Raymond and Stubbs defeated Rubin/Testud in a rousing afternoon doubles semifinal while Black and Likhovtseva were defeated by Anna and Lindsay in a late match following a suitable rest for Anna after her semifinal loss to Seles. The final day of the tournament ended up giving us two great matches. Venus Williams needed only 18 minutes to take the first set 6-0 in what looked to be a repeat of Seles worst loss of her career to Hingis at the Ericsson Open earlier this year. To her credit, Monica really hung in there and made it a match. Everyone had counted her out before she came storming back and took the second set in a tiebreak that included three double faults by Williams. Unfortunately, her luck ran out and Venus coasted to a 6-2 win in the third set. All in all, it was a more competitive match than I expected. The scary part of the week was that Venus won while still having trouble with her serve and making some errors at big points. If this girl had the consistency of Martina Hingis week in and week out, she would easily dominate the tour. The doubles final was a very entertaining skillful match between world #1 doubles team Lisa Raymond and Rennae Stubbs and the interesting pairing of victor and foe, Anna Kournikova and Lindsay Davenport. Stubbs always keeps it entertaining with her lively play. She was a weak link in their first set loss, but really started putting away some volleys to lift her team to a second set win. Davenport/Kournikova went up 5-0 in the third set and the crystal bowls were being brought out of their boxes when Raymond and Stubbs unexplainably won six games in a row. Davenport and Kournikova managed to win a game to force a tiebreak. Each team had match points in the tiebreak, but the #1 seeds pulled out the victory at 8-6. Raymond said it was the first time she remembered coming back from 5-0 to win a tournament. Stubbs complimented the tournament crowd as the "most knowledgeable tennis audience in the world" and said that's why this tournament is the favorite of herself and most of the players. Lindsay and Anna said they had fun playing together and would be playing some more tournaments the rest of the year as their respective partners are both out with injuries. I really have to compliment the tournament organizers, Promotion Sports, for putting on such a classy week of fun tennis. Raquel Giscafre and Susan Stratton know how to make the players, fans and media feel comfortable and there is no better setting than the beautiful resort of La Costa. It was truly a pleasure to attend this tournament and I look forward to coming back to Carslbad next year. |