Slims Tennis : Interesting New Faces Crowd In With Upsets

The Virginia Slims of San Diego tennis tournament, which has lacked an identity all week long--who are these players, anyway?--lost three more seeded performers Thursday.

So, now, of the six players remaining in the singles draw, only two are seeded, No. 2 Stephanie Rehe and No. 4 Rosalyn Fairbank.

Somehow, though, the tournament may have finally found its identity. If ever there was an audition for a future volume of “Who’s Who in Tennis,” this get-together at the San Diego Tennis and Racquet Club is it.

Ann Grossman? Debbie Graham? Jennifer Santrock? All are amateurs. All are teen-agers. All have reached the quarterfinals.

And all three have stirred some interest while making a splash at this tournament.

The latest to make some noise was Grossman, a 17-year-old farmer’s daughter from Ohio, who knocked out No. 5-seeded Robin White of Del Mar, 6-3, 1-6, 7-5, Thursday afternoon.

Grossman, a smallish right-hander with good punch from the baseline, had never been to San Diego before; she showed up for the qualifying tournament Saturday morning.

She said she had hoped to see some of the city during her visit. But now, like Graham and Santrock, who knocked out seeded players before her, she surprisingly has a date to play some more.

“This is my best win ever in a professional tournament,” said Grossman, the world’s 171st-ranked women’s player. “I played well enough to hang in there.”

White, rated as high as No. 15 early in 1987 but now residing at No. 47 in the computer rankings, hung in there, too, despite a day-long battle with her groundstrokes.

She lost the first set as forehand after forehand landed beyond the baseline, but she harnessed her game after that.

White, 24, helped the San Diego Buds win the championship of TeamTennis in 1985. She has a world of talent and can be tough to play when her many shots are all working.

A series of drop shots and backhand passes earned her the second set, and White pulled ahead, 5-3, in the third.

Then something unexpected happened. On the big points, especially two match points for White in the 10th game, it was Grossman who played steadily. White began to misfire again.

“I was playing not to lose on those points,” White said. “I can’t explain it, but I just couldn’t get in the right frame of mind.”

Grossman is in a great frame of mind now. When she was growing up, she used to bang groundstrokes off a wall in the barn at her parents’ farm.

Today, she and Santrock will trade shots for a berth in the semifinals.

Tennis Notes

The other two seeded players to lose Thursday were No. 6 Gretchen Magers and No. 8 Jo Durie. Both were expected. Magers was beaten by Stephanie Rehe, 7-6, 3-6, 6-2. Durie was upended by Ros Fairbank, 6-2, 6-4. . . . One quarterfinal match today pits Debbie Graham against Lisa Bonder-Kreis at 1:30 p.m.. Bonder-Kreis beat Anna Ivan, 6-4, 6-2, Thursday. Today’s other quarterfinal, between Ann Grossman and Jennifer Santrock, will be played at 6 p.m. . . . Rehe will play the winner of the match between Graham and Bonder-Kreis in one semifinal Saturday, and Fairbank will play the Grossman-Santrock winner in the other.