<i> Perestroika</i> Lures Pro Tennis to Moscow

At last you can win more than crystal glass by playing tennis in Moscow.

Following on the heels of an ice hockey tournament and a boxing event, the first professional tennis championship in the Soviet Union takes place this week in the latest breakthrough in East-West sporting relations.

At stake is $100,000.

“Before this, the only international tennis we had outside team competitions were a couple of exhibitions and an amateur event that gave a piece of crystal glass to the winner,” said Vsevolod Kukushkin, head of sports at the Soviet press agency Tass and press chief for this week’s tournament.

“Now they are playing for money, not crystal glass. It’s a real tournament,” Kukushkin said. “It’s a very special occasion.”

“The field here is one of the strongest I have ever known for a tournament of this size,” said Brenda Perry, a tour director with the Women’s International Tennis Assn. “This is one for the history books, and the interest shown by the players reflects it.”

Top seed for the $17,000 first prize is Pam Shriver of the United States, a late entry to the singles draw and ranked 11th in the world. If the seedings hold up, Shriver would meet Natalia Zvereva, a 1988 French Open finalist and the world’s 14th-ranked player, in the championship match next Sunday at Moscow’s Olympic stadium.

“To have players close to the top 10 in a $100,000 event is rare,” Perry said. “If the tournament is a success, it could be a forerunner of many more in the future.”

The indoor tournament, the latest stop on the Virginia Slims circuit, comes two weeks after the Calgary Flames and the Washington Capitals made an eight-game tour of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union’s first professional boxing tournament was held this summer in Tallinn, and the country is scheduled to stage its first world title fight next month in the Armenian capital of Yerevan.

Tennis is set to profit from the opening up of Soviet sports under Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika. And Perry said she had never known such hospitality.

“There have been problems, of course,” she said. “The overriding one is that of phone lines. But that’s not the fault of the tournament. I played on the circuit for 10 years, and the hospitality here is second to none. The authorities have even guaranteed that they will help at the airport with any players who arrive without having had time to get visas.”

The tournament has already been included on the provisional Virginia Slims calendar for 1990, when men’s pro tennis also is set to make its Soviet debut.