They’ll Be Glad That It’s Over

The women’s tennis tour blows into New York City today, with its dead-on-their-feet players lugging a season’s worth of nagging injuries, personal woes and interpersonal intrigue along as baggage.

The $2-million Chase Championships of the Corel WTA Tour begin today at Madison Square Garden, bringing down the curtain on an eventful year in women’s tennis. The top eight singles players and the best doubles teams have qualified for the right to play in the season-ending championships, the one stop on the women’s tour where they play a best-of-five set final.

Top-seeded Steffi Graf comes in with a re-injured left knee and a bad back but also with the best news she has had in two years--her father has been released from a German jail pending the outcome of his trial for tax-evasion.

But the back injury forced her to default the final of the Advanta Championships to Jana Novotna on Sunday after one set. Graf’s opening match in New York is against Karina Hubsudova of Slovakia and she said she will wait as long as possible before deciding whether to play.

Graf has won the three Grand Slam events she has entered this year, but No. 2-seeded Monica Seles’ frayed left shoulder has been hampering her lately.

Seles’ fitness and health are in question again, after she lost first to Jennifer Capriati and then to 16-year-old Martina Hingis. Unresolved is the question of her still-injured left shoulder. Seles had been saying that the tear inside her shoulder would require surgery to repair, then said she had found a rehabilitation program that would preempt surgery.

“The shoulder has gotten slowly better the last month or so,” Seles said. “But the consistency is not there. One day I would be serving really well and strong, but then the next day my serve is just not there. Then I start losing my confidence with it.”

Seles will open against Kimiko Date of Japan, who announced she will retire after the event.

Hingis is one of the hottest players on the women’s tour at the moment. She has won two tournaments in the last two months and has beaten Graf, Seles and Sanchez Vicario this year.

Hingis’ 6-2, 6-0 victory over Seles at Oakland earlier in the month was the first time in six years that Seles had failed to win a game in a set. Hingis will open against Irina Spirlea of Romania.

There are frayed relationships in doubles too. This may be the last stand for the successful pairings of Gigi Fernandez and Natasha Zvereva, Sanchez Vicario and Jana Novotna and even the new team of Hingis and Helena Sukova.