Martinez Just Sick About Loss to Frazier : Tennis: Field gets even slimmer as fourth-seeded Novotna is upset by amateur McGrath.

Already troubled by feeble attendance, the Virginia Slims of Indian Wells lost two of its top four players Thursday and looked even weaker.

Second-seeded and ninth-ranked Conchita Martinez woke up with a stomach virus but got out of bed and played her third-round match anyway. She was beaten by Amy Frazier, 1-6, 6-4, 6-2, picked up her rackets and went back to bed.

“It is just bad luck,” said Martinez’s coach, Eduardo Osta.

Attendance has been just as bad. After four days, only 10,851 have come to watch the 2-year-old event. That is just slightly more than the capacity of the 10,500-seat Stadium Court for one match.

Martinez, who had to leave the practice court and go back to her room, nevertheless led, 6-1, 3-0, when she started feeling worse.

“She had no legs,” Osta said. “There was no movement, nothing she could do.”

Although she wasn’t sick, Jana Novotna apparently felt much the same way. Novotna, fourth-seeded and 11th-ranked, was eliminated in three sets by an amateur, 103rd-ranked Meredith McGrath.

In another upset, sixth-seeded Hana Mandlikova lost to Isabelle Demongeot, 7-5, 0-6, 6-3. Third-seeded Helena Sukova avoided an upset to Gretchen Magers by saving two match points in a 6-4, 5-7, 7-6 (8-6) victory.

Providing the consistency expected of her, top-seeded Martina Navratilova rolled into the quarterfinals with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Judith Wiesner.

Navratilova, who improved her flexibility with off-season weight training, is no dumbbell. She knows her path to the final was smoothed considerably when McGrath cleared out Novotna.

Qualifier Nathalie Herreman is Navratilova’s quarterfinal opponent and the winner will play McGrath or Katerina Maleeva.

McGrath’s problem was a tricky one. Suppose you’re 18 years old, a college freshman, you’ve got a school paper on Shakespeare due and there’s a big tennis match to play.

What do you do? McGrath came up with a workable solution.

“I went out and got the Cliff’s Notes,” McGrath said.

The would-be teen Shakespeare scholar from the hamlet of Midland, Mich., hits the books at night as a student and the ball during the day as an amateur.

Her brand of Bardball defeated Novotna, 3-6, 7-5, 6-3.

McGrath beat Novotna at her own serve-and-volley game. Novotna may have been as surprised at losing to someone ranked 92 places lower as at losing to someone with even shorter hair.

“I think it’s sad for me, ranked 11,” said a frustrated Novotna, who drew a warning for racket abuse in the third set. “I shouldn’t lose to that player. It’s hard to believe it.”

McGrath found her victory a lot easier to embrace than coming up with six school papers she should be working on but isn’t because she’s playing tennis instead.

Daughter of a chemical engineer and a speech therapist, McGrath was a member of the USTA junior national team and reached the junior final of Wimbledon last year.

She enrolled at Stanford instead of turning pro so she could enjoy the “social aspect” of college.

Asked to list the social aspects she does not want to miss, McGrath said, “Parties.”

Demongeot wasn’t really in the mood to celebrate after defeating the erratic Mandlikova.

Mandlikova won five of the first seven games, lost the next five, won the next seven, then lost six of the next eight.

“It was a crazy match,” Demongeot said. “It wasn’t fun on the court. She can play great. She can play bad. You never know.”

Demongeot said that after she fell behind Mandlikova in the first set, 5-2, Mandlikova stopped hitting her first serve hard and began spinning the ball in as if she were hitting second serves.

“I couldn’t believe this,” Demongeot said. “This is crazy tennis.”