Davenport Gets Off to a Good Start Again

Lindsay Davenport understands tennis very well but she could use some help on baseball.

After her easy first-round victory in the U.S. Open Tuesday, she was invited, as the Olympic gold medal winner, to walk across the street and throw out the ceremonial first ball for the game at Shea Stadium. She said she was excited about it, even nervous.

Poor thing. She needed to be told there was no need to be excited, or nervous. It was a Mets’ game.

Davenport can be forgiven any shortcomings in other sports, since recently she seems to have few in her specialty. Tuesday, the 20-year-old from Newport Beach dispatched Adriana Serra-Zanetti of Italy in 46 minutes, 6-2, 6-1, further stirring the thoughts that she can go all the way in this tournament.

Among those possibly standing in her way are top-seeded Steffi Graf, a 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) winner in the night session over Yayuk Basuki of Indonesia, who had two set points on Graf in the second set and led the tiebreaker, 4-1, before bowing out; second-seeded Monica Seles, a 6-0, 6-1 winner over Anne Miller of Midland, Mich.; No. 3-seeded Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, a 6-2, 6-1 winner over Laxmi Poruri of Merced; No. 4 Conchita Martinez, a 6-2, 6-0 winner over Ruxandra Dragomir of Romania, and No. 7 Jana Novotna, a 6-1, 7-5 winner over Francesca Lubiani of Italy.

Leaving early, however, was Jennifer Capriati, who lost a 6-4, 6-4 match to a player who had never won a match in a Grand Slam event, Annabel Ellwood of Australia. Capriati was returning to the U.S. Open for the first time since 1993, when she came here as one of the top women players in the world--also as the ’92 Olympic gold medalist--and was upset immediately by Leila Meshki of the Republic of Georgia. After that, Capriati went away to controversy and problems.

On the men’s side, No. 1 Pete Sampras, expecting to face Adrian Voinea of Romania, found out 15 minutes before his match that Voinea was injured and that Jimy Szymanski of Venezuela, a lucky loser from the qualifying tournament, would replace him. Didn’t matter much to Sampras, who won, 6-2, 6-2, 6-1.

Also winning were No. 3 Thomas Muster, No. 4 Goran Ivanisevic, No. 10 Marcelo Rios and No. 13 Thomas Enquist. No. 15 Marc Rosset was defeated by Jared Palmer of Tampa.