Women’s Tennis Tourney Set for Moscow in October

Women on the tennis tour circuit will move into the Soviet Union this year and play a tournament in Moscow in October.

The $100,000 event will run for a week, starting Oct. 9, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Slims circuit said today.

“The Russians asked for the tournament,” Barbara Hannon said.

In Moscow, the government daily Izvestia, in reporting the scheduling of the women’s event, confirmed that a men’s tournament will be played there in 1990. The ATP last month announced that tournaments had been scheduled for Moscow and Beijing next year.

Shamil Tarpishchev, the leading Soviet tennis coach, was quoted in Izvestia’s Monday editions as saying that the men will play in Moscow in November, 1990, at the Olympic Sports Complex. He said a sponsor had been found but did not identify it.

Tarpishchev, in discussing the improvement by Soviet players, said the country’s best woman player, Natalya Zvereva, “is completely capable of being among the world’s three best women tennis players.”

He said that Soviet tennis players had earned $1.5 million last year, of which more than $500,000 was profit.

Tarpishchev said the popularity of tennis is growing in the Soviet Union but that its development is hampered by poor courts and a shortage of balls and rackets.