While Jana Fumes, Arantxa Earns Shot at Seles in Final   Canadian Open, Saturday, August 22 By Ed Toombs

Arantxa Sanchez Vicario (3) def. Jana Novotna (2), 4-6, 7-6 (7-4), 6-2
Semifinal, evening session
Time: 2 hours, 23 minutes

  So the finalists are now known: no Hingis, no Kournikova, no Graf, but two of the most successful players who have come to play recently in Montreal, which hosts the women's Canadian Open every other year.

  Monica Seles, who booked her passage to the finals this afternoon, has played here twice and reached the finals both times. She was a runner-up in 1992 and the champion in 1996. Arantxa Sanchez Vicario was her opponent both times. As well, Arantxa, a hugely popular figure here, won this event in 1994.

  This evening Sanchez completed the final pairing with a sometimes bitter three-set triumph over a former doubles partner and now fierce rival, second-seeded Jana Novotna. Novotna termed it a "very strange match", and with reason.

  The first set was quite bluntly, a horrible set of tennis. Both players had a game plan: Novotna to take the net and play to Sanchez's forehand, Arantxa to move her opponent around the court and occasionally "beat her to the net". It was the execution that was the problem. Most points were decided by who would make the first error. The winners to unforced errors ratio tells the story: 6/16 for Sanchez, 7/15 for Novotna. Fittingly, the 6-4 first set was decided by who made the last mistake: it was Arantxa, a double fault at 4-5, 30-40, and the ragged set went to Jana.

  The second set wasn't much better, until the final games. Sanchez took an early 4-1 lead, breaking an error-prone Novotna twice. But the Spaniard promptly handed both breaks back with two horrible service games in which she only won one point in total, and they were tied, 4-4. Arantxa fought back, however, and when she stole Jana's service in game eleven with a big forehand winner that elicited a scream and fist-pump, Sanchez appeared to be picking up her game at the right time. But Jana met the challenge , re-breaking Sanchez with some authoritative chipping and charging, and we had ourselves a tie-break. Best of all, both women finally seemed to be playing the high-quality tennis for which they are known.

  The tie-break saw Sanchez take 4-1 and 6-2 leads. Three of these points involved disputed calls, all of which went the Spaniard's way. An exasperated Novotna was furious at the umpire, George Rustscheff, who was overruling calls she thought were good and not overruling calls she didn't like, and an obscenity came from Jana's mouth that earned her a warning from Rustscheff. Faced with a big 6-2 deficit and quadruple set point, Jana fought off two set points with a brilliant running forehand winner, and th en chipped and charged, pressuring Sanchez to hit a backhand passing shot wide. But on the third set point, at 6-4, it was Arantxa's turn to play an aggressive point. She approached to Novotna's backhand, and the Czech sent a defensive lob long. The happy crowd exulted in a third set of tennis, especially since they were finally seeing the quality and intensity one would expect of a semifinal featuring quality players such as these.

  Unfortunately, as the third set began, Novotna seemed extremely preoccupied by her displeasure with umpire Rustscheff. At 0-1 she took the unusual step of walking over to WTA Director Brenda Perry, who was positioned in the corner of the stadium. Jana explains: "I was just asking her if she saw any of these calls because if she would tell me that I was wrong, I would stop arguing immediately. But you know, I simply didn't like the umpire at all." Ouch!

  On the tennis side of things, the turning point of the third set was when Sanchez broke Novotna to take a 4-2 lead. This break was sealed by a long rally which ended with Arantxa racing in after a short Novotna volley and whipping a cross-court backhand past her stranded adversary. Novotna was not to win another game, and it was not long before a delighted Sanchez could savour a sweet three-set win and yet another appearance in the Canadian Open final.

  After the match Sanchez opined that her improved level of fitness may have been the key to her success tonight. She has been working hard on her conditioning with new coach Angel Gimenez. "I have to prepare the point more. But to be able to do that I have to be fit, and I think that with Angel and my brother [Emilio] we try to get me in the best shape I can be, to be able to stay in the whole match." Her game plan for Seles in the final? "Move her around, you know, and go for my shots when I have a chance ."

  Novotna, still seething about umpire Rustscheff -- "I saw him [tonight] for the first time, and hopefully the last time" -- she stopped short of blaming her defeat on the poor guy. "I mean, Arantxa won it, she was the steadier one," said Jana. And in a less-than-convincing accolade for her former doubles partner, she added dryly: "So hooray for her."
 

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