Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 30, 2001
Venus avenges rout by Hingis
KEY BISCAYNE -- Venus Williams is 6 feet 1 and looked even taller Thursday, playing high-wire tennis and rising above the debate about fixed matches and racist fans to defeat her most irksome rival.
Williams gambled by swinging all-out on shot after shot, and the strategy worked. She controlled the rallies, kept defending champion Martina Hingis on the defensive and won 6-3, 7-6 (8-6) in the semifinals at the Ericsson Open.
"That is my game, to hit the ball," Williams said. "Any time that I try to play otherwise, I become an average player."
She avenged her most lopsided loss, a 6-1, 6-1 drubbing by Hingis at the Australian Open semifinals in January.
In Saturday's final, Williams will bid for her third Key Biscayne title against the winner of today's match between No. 4 Jennifer Capriati and No. 7 Elena Dementieva.
Also Thursday, No. 8 Pat Rafter beat Roger Federer 6-3, 6-1 in 58 minutes and plays the winner of the quarterfinal match between No. 3 Andre Agassi and Ivan Ljubicic to be completed today. It was suspended because of rain with Agassi trailing 3-1.
Controversy engulfed the Williams family after Venus' withdrawal from the Indian Wells semifinal against her sister Serena on March 15. There was speculation she ducked the match, and when the crowd booed the family, her father, Richard, said the jeers were racially motivated.
The Slovakia-born Hingis discounted his allegation as "nonsense," saying she could counter with a charge of racism against crowds in the United States because they're pro-American.
Williams defended her father and denied fixing matches but otherwise tried to stay out of the debate.
"For me it's not really very difficult, because in my opinion all these things going on around me are not very important," she said. "Tennis is not all and everything for me, so I really have been able to keep my game under control."
Playing with a bandage on each knee, the third-seeded Williams showed no effects of the knee tendinitis she cited for her withdrawal at Indian Wells. She took the offensive from the start and hit 51 winners but also 51 unforced errors, numbers that even she found startling.
"It was kind of weird," Hingis said. "She didn't really give me too much timing. It was like she hit a winner, and then she made a stupid mistake."
Hingis had distractions of her own: She's expected to testify Monday in the Miami trial of a man charged with stalking her at last year's tournament.
As for the more mundane matter of rankings, Williams is gaining on Hingis, who has been No. 1 for 183 weeks. Next week Williams will climb from third to second for the first time, moving ahead of Lindsay Davenport.
"She always comes up with some great tournaments," Hingis said. "So the other question is, can she keep it up? Can her body keep it up? You see all the bandages, like the wrist and legs, and last week she retired, so you don't know."
Williams said she looks forward to taking April off but expects to be ready for the final.
With the help of a fast start, she needed only two sets against Hingis, who let a game point slip away in each of the first three games and fell behind 4-0. There were 56 points played before Hingis finally won a game, and she double-faulted to lose the first set.
The second set was tighter, but Hingis missed a chance to serve it out at 5-4. She held a set point at 6-5 in the tiebreaker, but Williams smacked overhead and forehand winners for a 7-6 lead, then closed out the victory when Hingis pushed a backhand wide.
STALKER TRIAL: The Williams sisters and Davenport don't have to testify in person at the trial of the man accused of stalking Hingis, but Miami-Dade County Judge Kevin Emas ruled that they must provide sworn affidavits by today, when Dubravko Rajcevic's trial starts.
Rajcevic is charged with four counts of stalking and trespassing at last year's Ericsson Open. Each count carries a possible one-year sentence.
Hingis, the top-ranked women's player, will be a prosecution witness and is expected to testify Monday.
The affidavits are to provide testimony on whether the other players were "in a position to observe whether or not Hingis was suffering from substantial emotional distress" when Rajcevic is accused of stalking Hingis.
HALL OF FAME: Brad Gilbert, a former pro who coaches Agassi, is one of eight people who will be inducted into the Intercollege Tennis Association Men's Hall of Fame on May 23 at the University of Georgia.
Gilbert, who played at Foothill Junior College and Pepperdine, will be joined by coaches Dave Snyder, whose teams at Arizona and Texas won 697 dual meets, Tom Chivington of Foothill and Mercer Beasley of Tulane and Princeton, and players Ramsey Earnhart of Southern California, Fred McNair of North Carolina, Brian Teacher of UCLA and Watson M. Washburn of Harvard.