Bad News for Hingis Is Good for the Sport BYJ.A. ADANDE

You can talk all you want about the depth in women’s tennis, but it doesn’t mean a thing if No. 2 can’t beat No. 1.

There are a lot of great players out there, and now it’s necessary to know all of their names, not just one.

Tennis is the one sport where dominance kills interest. Dynasties sell everywhere else. The more NBA championships the Chicago Bulls won, the more Michael Jordan jerseys you saw on the streets. Tiger Woods is so good for ratings the TV network heads would sell their first-born children if it meant he would win every golf tournament.

But when the same people win over and over again in tennis, everyone tunes out.

That’s why Lindsay Davenport’s 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory in final of the Acura Classic on Sunday was good news for everybody in the sport who isn’t named Martina Hingis.

The second-ranked Davenport still trails Hingis by 444 points on the WTA Tour’s computer, but it’s obvious there is nothing separating the two on the court right now. Anna Kournikova, Monica Seles, Jana Novotna and Mary Pierce have also beaten Hingis in recent months.

Even Hingis recognizes the positives that come from the mounting challenges to her title as the queen of tennis.

“There a lot of changes,” Hingis said. “The game has gotten very interesting because you don’t have the same winners every week.”

Hingis could be forgiven if she preferred it the other way, when she was the one doing all the winning. She won the first 37 matches she played last year, lost in the French Open finals, then won her next 17. It looked like we really would have another Martina on our hands--like the time Martina Navratilova won 74 consecutive matches in 1984. Hingis was so robotically efficient that when she lost to Davenport in the semifinals here last year she felt compelled to remind us that “sometimes you are just a human being.”

Steffi Graf was another machine who could sometimes go weeks without dropping so much as a set. She had a 66-match win streak in 1989-90, won 32 in a row in 94 and 35 in a row in 1995.

A sporting public tried hard to stifle the yawns. The top of the tennis world was more exclusive than a top country club. Since the computer rankings first appeared in 1975 only seven players have been No. 1: Hingis, Graf, Seles, Navratilova, Chris Evert, Tracy Austin and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario.

When Hingis started winning Grand Slams--and everything in between--last year the scary thought was she was only 16. What would happen when she became stronger and wiser?

Now it’s obvious that the other players on the tour have found a way to counter Hingis’ quick steps and accurate shot-making: bully her. Hit hard shots and keep her on the defensive.

That’s what Davenport did when she was at her most effective Sunday.

It’s fortunate that some strategy on Hingis is emerging, because she is rapidly eliminating what had been considered her greatest weakness, her serve.

Her serve was clocked at up to 100 mph in the previous tournament at La Costa, and she served 10 aces at the Manhattan Country Club on Sunday.

With women like Venus Williams booming 120-mph serves now, the tour’s No. 1 player felt compelled to play keep up. The days of laughing off broken serves are over. “You have to keep holding serve,” Hingis said. “It’s more like men’s tennis. Once you lose your serve, you lose the set.

“It’s very different. Women’s tennis has improved so much, you have to have different strategies now. I don’t feel at home with that strategy. But there are next tournaments, and I have to improve.”

She’s feeling vulnerable and looking vulnerable.

“I guess [Hingis is more beatable] because she is losing more,” Davenport said. “But when you go out there, you are not thinking, ‘Oh, this is going to be easy. She is beatable.’ You just think she is No. 1, she is going to play tough, and you know you are going to have to play well to win that match no matter what the surface is.”

For the past three weeks no one has been tougher than Davenport, who won her third consecutive tournament Sunday. She has to be considered the favorite for the U.S. Open. But she never has won a Grand Slam event, so there remains an element of doubt.

After Sunday’s match, Hingis served notice that “The tennis is not over. There is still the U.S. Open coming up.”

A hungry No. 1 and a draw filled with people who can beat her. That’s a great combination. With all that’s going right for the women’s tour, someone felt compelled to point out a nagging sore spot, the inequity in payouts compared to the men’s tour.

“That’s the job of WTA Tour, so they have to do something,” Hingis said. “It’s not my job. We’re doing ours pretty good.”