Hyphen Lady Dashes Kid

Tennis aficionados from here to Rosarito Beach were looking forward to the match. The Killer Kid from Our Lady of Peace, Coronado’s own Angelica Gavaldon, would be going against none other than Martina Navratilova. At least, that’s the way the bracket looked for the Great American Bank tournament.

And that would have had the makings of fairy tale stuff -- just maybe Little Red Riding Hood would devour The Big Bad Wolf.

Of course, that was not the way it worked out. Navratilova had to withdraw because of a leg injury, though it’s possible she heard about Great American’s recent problems and wondered if she’d get paid if she won the darned thing.

So what happened was that Navratilova’s replacement was dismissed in the first round Tuesday by Ros Fairbank-Nideffer, who advanced to Wednesday’s match against Gavaldon.

Thus, through no fault of her own, Fairbank-Nideffer became a sort of party-crasher. She was not, to be sure, Martina Navratilova. And she was not, to be sure, a 16-year-old who could sweep the emotions (and support) of the crowd into her back pack and become destiny’s darling for a week.

“It was funny,” she said. “Walking out, it was Angelica this and Angelica that. Let’s get Angelica’s autograph. It’s like nobody even knows me here. A lot of the crowd thinks Angelica is the only player in San Diego. It’s not irritating to me. It’s understandable. Kids identify with her. She’s a nice girl. She’s likeable.”

Fairbank-hyphen-Nideffer laughed.

“And I’m an old lady,” she said.

Right, Ros, all of 29. And, oh yes, Fairbank has lived in San Diego County since before the hyphen, which she acquired last year when she married Bob Nideffer, her long-time coach. She has, in fact, lived here since 1985.

Maybe, then, this was more about age than geography. Not even maybe. Fairbank-Nideffer is young, but isn’t there something disarming about this teen-ager who wears hoop earrings and a braided pony tail and pink lipstick and grunts with each shot as if she’s trying to knock holes in both her racquet and her opponent’s?

Who could possibly root for anyone old enough to acquire a hyphen?

Not many. Not at the start, anyway.

However, what you get with a few (very few) years of age is experience. Fairbank had that. She boxed while Gavaldon punched. She played shots while Gavaldon hammered shots. She played for the route , and Gavaldon went for a rout.

The first set, though, did nothing but endear the crowd to The Killer Kid, who fell behind 3-1 and 4-2 and came back to win, 6-4. She was gutty, and she was persistent. She pounded away from the baseline as if the court itself was mined and thus offered nowhere to tread. But Fairbank’s shots came back as regularly as letters without postage.

By the middle of the second set, it was hard to tell the old lady from the kid. Gavaldon was up, 4-1, and had scored 10 consecutive points. Fairbank looked as if the bus to her Escondido home was waiting in the parking lot. When it was 5-2, it was time to turn the key on the ignition.

Gavaldon never won another game.

Period.

Experience did. All of them, as in 7-5 in the second set and 6-0 in the third.

Mind you, this was in spite of the fact that Fairbank protested the shot that won her the second set. Gavaldon’s deep lob was ruled long, but Fairbank thought it was on the line.

“I couldn’t not say something,” she said. “I couldn’t take a set like that.”

She was over-ruled. She had to take the set like that.

So experience and sportsmanship both were rewarded on this afternoon. She won it fair, and she won it square, because that was the way she insisted it would be.

Angelica Gavaldon will have plenty of days, here and elsewhere. She has not made the national splash of a Jennifer Capriati, but that may be because she is an older lady than the 14-year-old from Florida. San Diego will certainly follow her as she penetrates deeper and deeper into each major she enters.

But the bottom line was that this day belonged to another kid from San Diego, albeit a little bit older kid. It might have taken a lucky break to get Ros Fairbank-Nideffer into this match, but there was nothing lucky about the way she got through it and out of it and into the next one.

She deserved it.

What’s more, she belonged.