COMMENTARY : Where Have You Gone, Chris Evert?

Women’s tennis appears to be under fire. It also appears to be a mess.

Today’s semifinals of the U.S. Open will match Steffi Graf against Jana Novotna and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario against Gabriela Sabatini. All four are seeded--Graf No. 1, Sanchez Vicario No. 2, Novotna No. 7 and Sabatini No. 8. That would seem to be a pretty good faceoff of talents, and it could very well produce some of the best tennis and drama of the tournament.

For the sake of women’s tennis, let’s hope that happens.

The competitive quality of most of the women’s matches here so far has ranged from mediocre to dreadful. If you watch a lot of tennis, you come away with the impression that lots of 5.0 guys from the Claremont Club could go a couple of rounds here in the women’s bracket.

Graf has run through five matches with the loss of 15 games. She plays like somebody in a rush to catch a bus. If her opponent stretches the match past an hour, reporters ask Graf afterward how it felt to be pushed.

Sanchez Vicario has had a similar dash through the field, losing only 22 games and taking out the fifth-seeded player, Kimiko Date of Japan, in 22 minutes in the second set of a 6-3, 6-0 quarterfinal yawner. Date, the world’s No. 6-ranked player, won 10 points in the second set.

The world’s No. 5, Mary Pierce of France, drove them to the exits early in her quarterfinal Wednesday, losing to Novotna, 6-4, 6-0. In a recent article in Tennis magazine, network television announcer Mary Carillo, a former French Open mixed doubles champion, placed on Pierce the politically incorrect label, “Big Babe Tennis.” Against Novotna, Pierce played big-bore tennis, then dismissed it as easily as flicking a fly off a tabletop.

“I’m a little disappointed,” she said after being steamrollered in a 29-minute second set. “Like I said before, I tried, there wasn’t much I could do, and Jana played a great match.”

A number of things, other than just the general lack of drama and competitiveness in so many of the women’s matches, have served to push the disarray in women’s tennis to the forefront at this U.S. Open.

First of all, the women’s tour doesn’t have a sponsor. The price tag is a very reasonable-sounding $7 million, but nobody has jumped on the bandwagon vacated by Kraft.

Then, earlier this week, after calling a news conference and then calling it off, a group called IMG (for International Management Group) postponed its decision to begin its own women’s tour. It reportedly backed off at the request of the current WTA Tour, but the obvious conclusion is that all’s not quiet on the women’s tennis front.

That, of course, raises questions about the desirability and credibility of a tour that is run by the same people who are agents for many of the top players. The phrase conflict of interest quickly pops to mind. But IMG already owns and runs six of the tournaments on the women’s tour, so there’s already some slop in the cesspool.

A further example: IMG runs a women’s tournament in Houston each March. A reporter for the Houston Chronicle called an agent from another group, Advantage International, to check on potential entrants, and was told that since it was IMG’s tournament, Advantage International wouldn’t be pushing much for its players to go to Houston.

Certainly, much of this would not even be discussed were the women’s tour still blessed with the name identification and star quality of Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova or Monica Seles. Even Jennifer Capriati, as young and new as she was before she dug in her heels and decided to be a teen-ager, would give the WTA Tour some badly needed pizazz. Right now, you have Graf, half a dozen others who might beat her if the moon is just right, and hundreds of others who have no chance or particular appeal to the ticket-buying, TV-watching public.

Lindsay Davenport has a chance, with a personality and an appealing way about her. But she has so much work ahead of her on her game and her fitness that she’s not an immediate fix.

Zina Garrison Jackson still plays hard and does wonderful work for charity. Her gutty victory in the third round here against Alexia Dechaume-Balleret of France had drama, action, tension--almost the elements of a street fight--and it was clearly among the best-played in the women’s draw. But Garrison Jackson, about to turn 31, is in the twilight of her career.

Gigi Fernandez and Ginger Helgeson have the all-court games that produce appealing matches, but neither has quite made the breakthrough.

Frankly, the best things the women’s side of the tournament has going for it right now are Fernandez and Natalie Zvereva going for a doubles sweep of the Grand Slam tournaments for 1994.

Some of the big-name players just a notch below Graf aren’t helping matters, either.

In March at the Virginia Slims of Houston, Pierce was nowhere to be found 15 minutes before her final match against Sabine Hack.

Finally, she was discovered in the buffet line, and when told she had to get out and play or default, she complained that she hadn’t eaten and didn’t think the match was on because it had rained earlier that morning. When informed that the match was a live telecast, she suggested to promoters that they run a tape of last year’s match.

Then, according to the Houston Chronicle, when she did play--and lose in straight sets--she took a bathroom break in the middle of the match, but used it instead to return to the buffet line and load up a plate with potatoes.

Then there was the Sabatini-Fernandez quarterfinal match on Stadium Court Tuesday. It made any match played by Brad Gilbert, author of the tennis book, “Winning Ugly,” look like McEnroe and Borg at Wimbledon. At one point, Sabatini hit a 49-m.p.h. serve that bounced before it hit the net. A few games later she hit a 46-m.p.h. double bouncer.

“My mother can serve harder than that,” said Fernandez, who, nevertheless, lost the match.

Wednesday, the third match played on the 5,000-seat Grandstand Court, the show court adjacent to the main Stadium Court, was between Martina Hingis of Switzerland and Anna Kournikova of Russia. Hingis, relying on her superior experience, won the match, 6-0, 6-0. She is 13 years 11 months, Kournikova 13 years 2 months.

Putting them on a show court, when all the other juniors are out on the back courts where they belong, is despicable. Blame the USTA and the women’s tour for that.

More despicable is that both these children have already signed contracts with IMG, even though neither can turn pro until she is 14. Hingis, who says that she likes to watch “Sesame Street” before she goes onto the court, was actually brought in for a press interview and a few reporters actually attended. The transcription sheet showed that her translator was an IMG agent.

So this is what we have: Under-achieving star players, boring matches by bored players, agents trying to become owners, 46-m.p.h serves in front of 20,000 people, a snack break in the middle of a final and children with agents playing marquee matches.

Yup, it’s a mess.