Rankings May Require Revolving Door

The Who’s-No. 1 soap opera that played out here in the Newsweek Champions Cup tennis tournament will be repeated in the next two weeks at the Lipton in Key Biscayne, Fla.

Carlos Moya’s loss to Mark Philippoussis in Sunday’s final here left Moya 37 points ahead of Pete Sampras. Moya will remain No. 1 for two weeks no matter what, since there is no ranking change on the middle Monday at Lipton, same as at the Grand Slam events.

Lipton gives 370 points to the champion, and with a complicated bonus point system, that number could grow to as many as 500, depending on who beats whom. Besides Sampras, three others have a shot to leave the Florida event on top. No. 3 is Yevgeny Kafelnikov of Russia, 102 points behind; No. 4 Alex Corretja of Spain, 234 behind, and No. 5 is Patrick Rafter of Australia, 369 behind.

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There has been much talk and some raised eyebrows here over Charlie Pasarell’s latest dream, the Indian Wells Garden. The raised eyebrows come from the financial mathematics of building a state-of-the-art tennis facility, with play beginning there next year, at a cost of $65 million, to be paid for, including the huge debt service, with one annual two-week event.

Attendance figures and some projections may shed some light. Total attendance this year, for all 17 sessions of both the Newsweek and Evert events, was 151,477, a modest increase of 2,517. The main attendance revenue comes from sessions starting Monday (the Evert Cup starts the previous Friday), when tickets are sold for seven-day sessions and five nights. Attendance for those was 121,780, or just 331 more than last year.

Next year, in Pasarell’s new 16,071-seat stadium, there is a potential for 4,571 more tickets to be sold in just the seven-day sessions that have sold out regularly for the last few years. That’s another 32,000 seats and at, say, $45 a ticket, a revenue increase of $1.44 million alone. And were all 16,071 seats to go for the night sessions too, Pasarell’s gamble in the desert would clearly turn to gold.

Notes

Charlie Pasarell, tournament director, on fears that fans will have to deal with a less-than-finished facility next year: “We’ll be ready. It will not be a dust bowl. . . . The men’s doubles final Sunday completed a great day for the Aussies. Sandon Stolle, son of former star player Fred Stolle of Australia, teamed with Wayne Black of Zimbabwe to win over Rick Leach of Laguna Beach and Ellis Ferreira of South Africa, 7-6 (7-4), 6-3. Both Black and Leach played for Leach’s father, Dick, at USC.