Hingis Delivers a Final Message

Martina Hingis was a gracious winner. On the way to share the joy and relief of victory with her mother, she made a detour and stopped by Lindsay Davenport’s courtside chair.

“I said, ‘You are No. 1 now,’ ” Hingis said. “I told her already earlier in the locker room that she just had a great year, especially at the end when she won the U.S. Open. She is the eighth player to be No. 1 and she deserves that right now.”

Hingis smiled.

“But I am going to keep up,” she said.

That message came flying across the court in the form of aggressive groundstrokes, as the second-seeded Hingis of Switzerland defeated the top-seeded Davenport of Newport Beach, 7-5, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2, Sunday afternoon in the final of the Chase Championships at Madison Square Garden.

It was the first tournament title for Hingis since she won the Italian Open in May, and her first victory against Davenport since March at Indian Wells. The outcome had no bearing on the year-end No. 1 ranking but carried potential implications for 1999.

“It was about time for me,” Hingis said. “Just to show people that I am able to win a big tournament.”

She was curious to know how sizable the gap is between herself and Davenport, who took over the No. 1 ranking from Hingis on Oct. 12.

“Five hundred?” Hingis said, looking dubious. “Come on! Two hundred? Three hundred?”

Someone informed her it was 266 points.

“So, it is not as [much],” she said. “We have been pretty even this year. Whatever is going to happen next year, it is going to be very important. I think we are going to have more great matches against each other. At the end of the year, she was better.”

Davenport did not feel the top ranking was riding on this match, not even in a figurative sense.

“We’ve played a number of times this year when I was No. 2 and I beat her and I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I am the No. 1 player because I beat her,’ ” Davenport said. “I knew she really wanted to win this tournament. So did I.”

She looked more downcast immediately after the match during the on-court presentation ceremony.

“I’m a little disappointed to end this year on this note,” Davenport said. “I’ll get over it in a few hours.”

Hingis played more aggressively than she did in the U.S. Open final and excelled at fighting off break-point opportunities in the first two sets. Davenport converted just one of 11 break points in that stretch and four of 16 overall.

The long hours on the court Saturday, a three-set semifinal victory over Steffi Graf and winning the doubles title in three more sets, eventually caught up to Davenport.

“The court is a little bit faster, so she was attacking the ball a bit better,” Davenport said. “I was just a little bit tired and that made a difference.”

It was the final match of a breakthrough season for Davenport, in which she won her first Grand Slam title at the U.S. Open in September and ascended to No. 1 about a month later. She won six tournament titles and reached four more finals as well as the semifinals of the French Open and quarterfinals of Wimbledon.

Her arrival at the top created more of a level playing field in 1998. Hingis, who won 12 titles and three of the four Grand Slams in 1997, won five tournaments this year and one Grand Slam. There were four different winners of the Slams this year--Hingis [Australian Open], Arantxa Sanchez Vicario [French Open], Jana Novotna [Wimbledon] and Davenport [U.S. Open].

“For some reason I was able to break through and play great tennis and make my dream come true,” Davenport said. “To end the year No. 1 is unbelievable, but to look back and see I won the U.S. Open is unbelievable. I can’t describe it. It is going to be hard to duplicate next year.”

Especially since Hingis is planning on “keeping up.” She seemed almost disappointed she won’t be playing a match against Davenport--or anyone else-- until January.

“Now I have finally found my rhythm again, I can’t really show it anymore,” she said. “I’m disappointed about that. I won this tournament and now it is over. I am going to take a couple of days off and just try to continue the way I did this tournament.”

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Bart McGuire, chief executive officer for the WTA tour, said the search continues for a title sponsor. The software company Corel sponsored the tour for the last four years.

“Nobody has put the money on the table yet,” McGuire said. “I wish they had. It is very late and it is later than I had anticipated.”

Additionally, McGuire said he wants a shorter schedule, by at least two or three weeks, in time for the 2001 season.

In 1999, rules regarding bathroom breaks and injury timeouts will be changed, reducing by one the number of times the trainers can come out during changeovers to treat the players.

“We are going to make sure the chair umpire and referee, the tournament referee have the authority to say you are abusing the rule,” McGuire said. “If it so happens somebody wants to take a bathroom break just after having her serve is broken at 5-4 in the third set, I think our tournament referees are going to be a little skeptical. . . . I do believe that there has been some abuse of the rules.”