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Seles, Navratilova Aren’t About to Waste Time : Tennis: Each wins in less than an hour, but 17-year-old is troubled by her inconsistent serve.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

What can you get done in an hour?

Let’s see. Eat dinner. Shave about half of Vlade Divac’s beard. Hear Dick Vitale’s favorite cliches.

Play a tennis match?

Martina Navratilova and Monica Seles needed less than an hour each to win second-round matches Tuesday in the Virginia Slims of Palm Springs and stay on course for a potential final showdown on Sunday, with No. 1 hanging in the balance.

Seles, top-seeded and second-ranked, tinkered with her serve and toyed with Monique Javer, beating her, 6-3, 6-1, in 58 minutes.

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Seles, 17, said she wants to serve like Ivan Lendl, but instead she drove past her opponent like Emerson Fittipaldi.

Actually, Seles admitted she is trying out a whole new serve, which is probably what she will need to win this tournament. She finished with four aces, five double faults and a perplexed look.

“I’m confused, to tell you the truth,” Seles said of her serve.

Navratilova was merely swift. She dispatched Amanda Coetzer, 6-2, 6-2, in 54 minutes and seemed slightly irritated by questions about Seles’ chances of becoming No. 1.

The surest way for that to happen is for Seles to beat Navratilova in the final, a circumstance that the 34-year-old left-hander does not find particularly attractive.

“It doesn’t affect me, I’m still No. 3,” Navratilova said. “It makes no difference who is No. 1 during the year, it only matters who is No. 1 at the end of the year.”

In case Navratilova does play Seles in Sunday’s final, Navratilova said she would never mention anything to Seles about the importance of the match.

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“You mean gamesmanship?” said Navratilova. “If she becomes No. 1, I’ll be the first one to congratulate her. I mean, what am I going to say? ‘Hey, Monica, your feet are really big?’ ”

For the record, Seles wears a Size 9 1/2.

Despite the ease of her victory, Seles was not altogether pleased. She said she changes her serve every tournament. This week, she is concentrating on hitting it as hard as she can.

Eventually, she will find something that works and stay with it, Seles said. The benefits of a strong first serve are obvious to Seles, who must work hard on every point because she gets no easy points when she is serving.

“It would be really useful to have a powerful first serve,” she said.

Navratilova’s serve remains one of her biggest weapons, and since double arthroscopic surgery last fall, she is again hitting it while standing on sound knees. And the benefits of that?

“I had a two-inch vertical jump last year,” Navratilova said. “Now, I can hang again.”

Tennis Notes

It was a short tournament for the next Steffi Graf. Ninth-seeded Anke Huber, 16, of Germany was upset by Ginger Helgeson, 22, a former Pepperdine All-American, 2-6, 6-3, 6-2. Helgeson gets her reward tonight--a third-round match against Martina Navratilova. “She’s a legend,” Helgeson said. “I’m sure she’s not going to be playing the tour for many more years, so I’m happy I have the opportunity to play her.”

Helgeson, formerly of Edina, Minn., turned pro last June and lives in San Diego. She is ranked No. 209. She was warned about a delay when the trainer re-taped a blister on her foot, but when chair umpire John Lawler announced the warning, he mispronounced her name as “Hegelson.” “It’s Helgeson,” she shot back over her shoulder. “Hegelson sounds like a farmer to me,” she explained later.

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