TENNIS / AT LA COSTA : Capriati Is Maintaining Her Olympic Momentum

Jennifer Capriati, introduced as the player who “brought the gold home to America,” had no trouble Wednesday night in her first match since the Barcelona Games.

She wasn’t sporting her U.S. tennis skirt with American flags on the pockets, but the crowd of 4,032 at the Mazda Tennis Classic saw a familiar game.

Tough.

Against Austria’s Judith Wiesner, the second-seeded Capriati powered her way to a 6-4, 6-1 victory at La Costa Resort & Spa.

Capriati was on target from the start, giving up only three points as she took a 3-0 lead in the first set.

“I felt good. I was moving well, I was hitting the ball solid,” Capriati said. “The only thing I wasn’t happy with was my serve.”

With Capriati up 5-2, Wiesner began to rally by mixing up her shots, hitting with different speeds, angles and spins. Wiesner held serve and broke Capriati’s serve to close to 5-4, then held off two set points before the Capriati broke back to win the set.

“There were certain points she played well in the first set,” Capriati said. “She can change it up a lot and she hits hard.”

In the second set, Wiesner forced nine of the match’s 17 games to deuce, but Capriati came through.

Capriati said the significance of her gold medal, which is safe at home, still hasn’t hit her.

But she had at least one Olympic memory, a hair ribbon made out of American flag material that she wore Wednesday night.

“Before one of my matches, one of the American swimmers exchanged it with me for a red one I had, “ she said. “But I won with it, so I kept it.”

In other matches, Anke Huber of Germany swept Debbie Graham, 6-0, 6-2; Spain’s Conchita Martinez defeated France’s Isabelle Demongeot, 6-4, 7-5, and Nathalie Tauziat of France came back from a 3-2 deficit in the third set to beat Stephanie Rehe, 7-5, 3-6, 6-3.

If the seedings hold to form, Huber and Capriati would play each other in the semifinals, a rematch of their Olympic quarterfinal match that the American won, 6-3, 7-6.

“Sure I want to play against her,” Huber said. “We had a very good game in the Olympics. We will see.”