Williams Keeps Answering Questions

Even though she lost her quarterfinal match, Venus Williams continued to be a show-stopper in the State Farm Evert Cup tennis tournament.

At least for the day Wednesday, with the big-name men players crumbling like a bunch of blueberry muffins, Williams was pretty much the talk of the place.

The 16-year-old former Southern Californian dazzled a large evening crowd with her speed, big serve and hard ground strokes from both sides, even while losing to another Southern California product, Murietta’s Lindsay Davenport.

The final score in the 2-hour 23-minute thriller was 6-4, 5-7, 7-6 (7-1), and Davenport, 20, the eighth-ranked player in the world and the reigning Olympic champion, had all she could handle.

“She’s going to be one of the great players of the future, maybe this year,” Davenport said. “I was lucky to get away with this one tonight.”

This was only the 25th match of Williams’ pro career and only her sixth this year. Her father, Richard, held the theory that coming up through the junior ranks was not the way to go, so he kept her mostly out of the public eye, practicing with her on the courts of Lynnwood, Compton and Inglewood and later in Florida, where the family lives now.

So the big question has been all along how Williams would hold up in big matches. She apparently has answered that here, taking out Iva Majoli, No. 9 in the world, in a long three-setter Tuesday and then taking Davenport to the edge Wednesday night. Williams served for the match at 5-4 and was two points from the match with Davenport serving at 5-6.

Finally, in the tiebreaker, Williams seemed to play like a 16-year-old, and Davenport, who lost her serve 10 times in the match--the same number as Williams--played like the veteran she has become.

“It was weird,” Davenport said. “I’m only 20, but I really felt like the older one out there, and it kind of kept me in there, thinking I can draw on that.”

On a day when Pete Sampras and Goran Ivanisevic lost quickly and surprisingly to lesser-known players in the men’s Newsweek Champions Cup, Williams grabbed the top spot on the marquee. And for her efforts, she will take home $20,500 as a quarterfinalist, plus nearly 100 ranking points, up to about No. 113.

She also managed to show that all this success won’t make her instantly older and more mature. Asked afterward why, after serving and volleying successfully three times in the middle of the match, she just stopped, she responded at about her age level.

“Because I didn’t want to do that anymore,” she said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Court Is in Session

Today’s featured matches in the State Farm Evert Cup (women) and Newsweek Champions Cup (men) tournaments at the Hyatt Grand Champion Resort. Seedings in parentheses:

DAY SESSION STARTING AT 10

* Stadium Court--Jonathan Stark vs. Alberto Berasategui (14); Marc Rosset (13) vs. Michael Chang (3); Slava Dosedel vs. Thomas Muster (2); Carlos Moya (8) vs. Mark Philippoussis.

* Clubhouse Court--Magnus Larsson vs. Cedric Pioline; Jonas Bjorkman vs. Chris Woodruff; Luke and Murphy Jensen vs. Rick Leach and Jonathan Stark (8) (fifth match on).

NIGHT SESSION STARTING AT 6:30

* Stadium Court--Arantxa Sanchez Vicario (1) vs. Irina Spirlea (6); Todd Woodbridge-Mark Woodforde (1) vs. Neil Broad-Piet Norval.