TENNIS : Courier, Seles Top These Ratings, Too

With legitimate tournament tennis all but wrapped up for 1992--not counting dueling million-dollar special events such as the Virginia Slims Championships, the ATP Championships and the Grand Slam Cup--the time is right to take stock and pass out awards. Actually, it’s a fairly simple job.

Top men’s player: Jim Courier. It’s hard to argue with the selection of the No. 1-ranked player in the world. Besides, Courier won two Grand Slam events and made the semifinals of a third and no one else matched that.

(Runners up--Andre Agassi, Stefan Edberg. Between a bad start and a mediocre ending, Agassi was brilliant at the right time. He won Wimbledon. Edberg lost to Courier in the Australian final, but that’s not what got him the runner-up position. No, he made it basically for his gutsy U.S. Open performance, even though it got hotter for him than a sauna back in Sweden.)

Top women’s player: Monica Seles. The No. 1-ranked player won three of the four Grand Slam events and lost to Steffi Graf in the final of the other, at Wimbledon on grass, which is not exactly Seles’ favorite surface anyway. That would be more like the cool, marble floor of a shopping mall, where she could indulge in buying additional clothing of her favorite color of the moment, black.

Top match: Seles’ three-set victory over Graf in the French Open final.

Worst match: Any first-round women’s match in any Grand Slam tournament.

Worst loss: Jim Courier losing at Wimbledon to qualifier Andrei Olhovskiy, who was referred to by his own coach as “a nobody.”

Longest match: Edberg’s 5-hour 26-minute, five-set victory over Michael Chang in the U.S. Open semifinals.

Shortest match: (See Worst match above.)

Biggest baloney: Twenty-two year-old Agassi’s supposed U.S. Open romance with 50-year-old Barbra Streisand.

Second biggest baloney: Grunt-o-meters (The London Daily Mail used one at Wimbledon to measure Seles’ loudest grunt at 98.1 decibels, which the Mail claimed to be two decibels lower than a pneumatic drill and three decibels higher than a plane flying overhead.)

Saddest ranking: John McEnroe, No. 21.

Best quote: Goran Ivanisevic of Croatia on the lack of excitement in Palm Springs--”I don’t like here. I try restaurants, I see two young people. Everybody else is 100 years old, 150. Every time I think somebody is going to die in restaurant.”

Second best quote: Ivanisevic on his maturity--”I still break rackets, but I do it in a positive way.”

Best unintentional quote: Agassi on playing McEnroe at Wimbledon--”I really take an invested interest in this match.”

Best line: Richard Krajicek of the Netherlands saying 80% of women tennis players are “fat, lazy pigs,” then recanting--”I exaggerated . . . I meant 75%.”

Material girl: No one in tennis played better than Monica Seles in 1992, but according to People magazine, no athlete in the world dressed worse.

The magazine said Seles, 18, needs to spend more time on her wardrobe and less time on her tennis game.

Seles, who won three Grand Slam event titles, the year-long Kraft Tour points championship and will again end the year ranked No. 1, was the only athlete to make the magazine’s worst-dressed list. At least she may has plenty of company, with the likes of Roseanne Arnold, Ivana Trump, Latoya Jackson, Michael Jackson, Axl Rose, Geena Davis and Arsenio Hall.

Ivan’s not terrible: Ivan Lendl’s victory last week in the Seiko Super tournament in Tokyo was something of a landmark occasion for him. Not only was it his first title in 14 months, it was also his first since becoming a U.S. citizen. It marked his return into the top 10 (he’s No. 8) and made him the oldest winner on the IBM/ATP tour this year.

Lendl, who is 32 years 7 months old, said reports of his demise were exaggerated: “People are making much more out of me not winning than there was.”

Martina time: Martina Navratilova’s victory last week in the final of the Porsche Grand Prix in Filderstadt, Germany, came on her 36th birthday and made her the second-oldest player to win a women’s pro tournament.

In 1983, Billie Jean King won at Birmingham, England, the last of her 78 singles titles. She was 39 years 6 months.

But he uses a baton: Asked who his ultimate doubles partner would be, Stefan Edberg chose John McEnroe. For someone outside of tennis, Edberg selected Carl Lewis--”Because he would get to the net quicker than anyone else.”

FYI: There is a 17-year-old Czech player on the Kraft Tour named Gabriela Navratilova. The teen’s record is 1-3 with prize winnings of $465, which puts her exactly 1,829 victories and $23,913,783 in winnings behind her namesakes.

All-Americans: Julie Exum of Duke leads an elite 32-player field featuring 18 All-Americans in the Riviera Women’s All-American tennis championships, Thursday through next Sunday at Riviera Tennis Club.

The Intercollegiate Tennis Assn. event is the second leg of the ITA collegiate grand slam. Exum, one of five Duke players in the singles draw, won the season’s first major tournament, the ITA national clay courts, last month in Richmond, Va. Four players ranked in the top five will be playing on the courts of Riviera Country Club--No. 2 Laxmi Poruri of Stanford, No. 3 Paloma Colantes of Mississippi, No. 4 Heather Willens of Stanford and No. 5 Cinda Gurney of North Carolina.

Tennis notes

Jonathan Canter of Los Angeles won the men’s open division of the 106th Southern California Sectional championships, defeating Woody Hunt of Torrance, 6-2, 7-5. Janet Lee of Rancho Palos Verdes defeated Kirsten Dreyer of Rancho Palos Verdes, 6-1, 6-2, in the women’s open division. Julian Barham and Steve Cluse of Riverside defeated Cary Lothringer and Sergio Rico in the men’s doubles final, 7-6, 6-3, and Ania Bleszynski of Thousand Oaks and Pam Trump of Arcadia beat sisters Jennifer and Julie Slattery of Hungtington Beach, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6, in the women’s doubles final. Lee and Hunt won the mixed doubles title with a 7-5, 6-4 victory over Lupita Novelo of Rancho Palos Verdes and Geoff Martinez of San Pedro.

The SCTA sectional class championships were won in men’s singles by Renato Caballero of Los Angeles in 5.5; Sebastian Hoppe of Santa Monica 4.5; John Garton of El Segundo, 3.5; Christian Henish of Alta Loma, 3.0. Women’s singles winners were Ramona Robinson of Los Angeles, 5.5; Irene Tanimoto of Diamond Bar, 4.5; Vicki Schutzenberger of Diamond Bar, 3.5; and Lorena Cruz of North Hills, 2.5.

In men’s doubles, Ricky Jones and David Porte of Ontario won in 5.5; Spencer Sam and Christian Sten of West Covina, 4.5; James Hackett and Virgil Swanier of Long Beach, 3.5. Kaidi Jones and Dorothy Woods of Cerritos won the 3.5 women’s doubles and Wilma Bayek and David Benjamin of Palos Verdes won the 5.5 mixed doubles title.