Hingis/Novotna Win Doubles Final over Basuki/Vis Canadian Open, Sunday, August 23  By Ed Toombs

    The Canadian Open doubles final featured the top doubles team in women's tennis, Hingis/Novotna, against the defending Canadian Open champions and fourth-seeds, Basuki/Vis. The class of the top seeds was obvious, as they polished off their opponents in just over an hour.

    It was a confident, relaxed and grinning Hingis/Novotna pair we saw throughout, never overly concerned they would lose to the Indonesian-Dutch tandem. Martina and Jana genuinely enjoy playing together, and it shows. Jana explains their lighthearted approach: "whenever we get too serious our tennis goes down". And the confidence displayed by Hingis/Novotna in this match was well-founded. These teams had only played once in the past two years, last year in the Leipzig final, and Hingis/Novotna were easy 6-2, 6-2 winners. But Hingis also beat Basuki/Vis twice last year when partnered with Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, while Novotna and Davenport also beat Basuki/Vis twice. So the top seeds knew they would probably have no trouble if they just played a solid match.

    Play a solid match they did, seemingly without forcing their talent too much. Things started poorly for Basuki/Vis in their first service game, when Yayuk's serve was broken and Hingis/Novotna took a 2-0 lead. More nervous and trying to force the issue, both Basuki and Vis made volleying errors and were often forced out of position and into a scrambling mode by Novotna's cagey and unconventional shot placement. This was the only break of the opening set, although a relaxed Hingis, who at teams seemed too casual, was often in trouble on her serve. In fact, Basuki/Vis had six break points on Martina's serve alone, but did not convert an any of them, either because of clutch Hingis serving or excellent support from Novotna at the net.

    In the second set Basuki/Vis hung tougher, but suffered a crucial blow when Vis's serve was broken at 3-3. Vis made three key volley errors in this game, and knew how crucial the loss of the game was: on the way back to her chair she angrily kicked one of the ball-kids' cushions almost into the first row of seats.

    Basuki/Vis were playing two superior players who also mesh wonderfully well as a doubles team, so they knew they would have to play extraordinarily well in order to win. This was not the case: Vis missed too many key volleys, and Basuki, while she pulled off some flashy angle volleys and blazingly driven forehand drives, was at times guilty of going for too much when a safer shot would have sufficed, consequently overhitting too many shots from the baseline.

    As for the champions, even the few times they were in trouble they never seemed worried. The star of the show was Novotna, to my mind. She was difficult to pass when at the net, and was making sharp volleys as well as very intelligent and well-placed shots to put Basuki/Vis in danger. Hingis was less consistent and seemed less focused, but never let the team down in any critical situation.

    Hingis, who said the doubles crown "makes my mood a little better" in the wake of her semifinal singles loss to Seles last night, now looks to complete a doubles grand slam at the US Open, as she and Novotna won the French Open and Wimbledon and Martina teamed with Mirjana Lucic to take the Australian doubles crown. Hingis notes a certain irony in her doubles dominance: "At the start of the year I said I wanted to be first in doubles. Now that I am, my singles has dropped off. Maybe I can even them out next year," she said with a smile.

    Given their present form, it would be hard to bet against Hingis/Novotna at the US Open.

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