TENNIS ROUNDUP : Martinez Moves Up With Barcelona Title

Conchita Martinez of Spain vaulted into the top 10 of women’s tennis Sunday by beating Manuela Maleeva-Fragniere, 6-4, 6-1, to win a $225,000 tournament at Barcelona, Spain.

Martinez and Maleeva-Fragniere both had problems holding serve, leading to seven service breaks in the first set. But Martinez, 19, kept her opponent off-balance with a wide variety of shots.

Martinez earned $45,000. Maleeva-Fragniere got $25,200.

Martinez won the first four games of the match, which was played in sporadic rain. Maleeva-Fragniere rallied to make it 5-4, but Martinez then broke serve to win the set.

The second set featured some long rallies, but Martinez won most of the key points.

The top two seeded singles players, Martina Navratilova and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, settled for the doubles title. They teamed for a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Nathalie Tauziat of France and Judith Wiesner of Austria.

Rain forced suspension of Sunday’s Monte Carlo Open final between Boris Becker and Sergi Bruguera.

Becker was serving for the first set at 5-4 when the match was halted.

Officials waited three hours before suspending play for the day. The match is scheduled to resume today.

Becker, seeking his first professional clay-court title, had three set points in the ninth game but Bruguera saved them all and won the game. He also won the first point of the 10th game.

Bruguera is the hottest player on the clay-court circuit, winning 15 of his past 16 matches on the slow surface.

The start of the singles final was delayed almost an hour because of the three-set doubles final that was won by Luke Jensen of the United States and Laurie Warner of Australia. They beat Dutch players Paul Haarhuis and Mark Koevermans, 5-7, 7-6 (7-3), 6-4.