Kournikova Defeats Erratic Stevenson

Anna Kournikova, the centerfold of the women’s tour, revealed a respectable forehand and backhand too Tuesday night.

She won her first-round match in the Acura Classic, beating fellow 19-year-old Alexandra Stevenson, 6-2, 6-3, and will play second-seeded Lindsay Davenport this afternoon.

Kournikova, ranked 19th and exuding confidence after her semifinal showing last week in Oakland--where she pushed Wimbledon champion Venus Williams in a 6-4, 7-5 defeat--got 12 break points against the erratic Stevenson and converted five of them. She trailed in the second set, 3-1, but roared back for the win and said afterward that she wasn’t ever worried.

“With Alexandra, you never know,” Kournikova said. “You get a winner, then an ace, then a double fault. I played her in Sydney earlier in the year, and was down in the first set [actually, she lost it] and she was making every line. But then she started to miss. She is like that. Very erratic.”

OK, so much for the tennis.

Kournikova, the Russian whose looks prompted the television commercial that features veteran Mary Joe Fernandez delivering the punch line: “Some of the players are jealous of her, you know, portfolio,” walked onto the court with the public-address announcer telling the sellout crowd of 6,200 that she was “one of the most photographed people in the world.”

As if to support that, 25 cameras in the courtside photographers’ well started clicking the moment she stepped onto the court. And they didn’t stop until 1 hour 1 minute later, when she had finished off Stevenson. Were one to edit the copious amounts of film shot in that hour, he would be hard-pressed to find 10 frames of Stevenson.

The Kournikova road show seems to have become an unstoppable celebrity caravan. One tournament official said, “We could have sold 10,000 tickets, easy.”

It was a night in which the pretty people came out to see the pretty person, and there seemed to be three 20-ish males for every female.

Kournikova came with her own chorus line. Ten young males stood throughout, high in the bleachers at the south end, each shirtless and with a letter from her name painted on his chest. They cheered, they sighed, they worshiped from afar. Like Kournikova’s game in the second set, they even got a bit scrambled, with an O wandering to the end and the A missing. But soon, like their teen-age heroine, they got it back together in time.

Kournikova, as her detractors readily point out, has yet to win a tour title and has yet to get further than the quarterfinals of any Grand Slam event. Her fans would counter that she has yet to lose a crowd.

As the Socrates of the women’s tour, Jennifer Capriati, would say, “Whatever.”

*

Martina Hingis, winner here in ’97 and ‘99, said that rust in her game caused by inactivity since her quarterfinal loss at Wimbledon contributed to a few problems in her 6-2, 7-6 (2) victory Tuesday. She beat Dominique Van Roost of Belgium, No. 15 in the world, but only after losing her serve at 5-5 of the second set and needing to scramble through a tiebreaker.

“Overall, it was a good win to have, but my game still needs improvement,” Hingis said. “I need to play lots of tournaments. When I do, I tend to get better and better.”

Hingis, ranked No. 1 and similarly seeded here, was the first into the quarterfinals. If form holds, she will play Venus Williams, seeded No. 3, in the semifinals.

The best match of the day session was Sandrine Testud’s 2-hour 3-minute first-round battle with Chanda Rubin. Testud, of France, seeded eighth, won, 3-6, 7-5, 6-2, by simply out-grinding Rubin in the 90-degree heat.

Also making it into the second round Tuesday was Meilen Tu, a Porter Ranch resident who won the U.S. Open junior title in 1994, beating Hingis in the final. Tu beat Elena Dementieva of Russia, 6-2, 2-6, 6-3.

Others advancing included qualifier Nicole Pratt of Australia over Fabiola Zuluaga of Colombia, 6-2, 4-6, 6-2; Amy Frazier over seventh-seeded Anke Huber of Germany, 6-0, 7-6 (3); Amanda Coetzer of South Africa over Lisa Raymond, 4-6, 7-5, 6-1, and sixth-seeded Nathalie Tauziat of France over qualifier Ann Kremer of Luxembourg, 6-4, 6-3.

Fifth-seeded Conchita Martinez of Spain, coasting along with a 6-3, 5-1 lead, needed six match points to close out Kim Clijsters of Belgium, 6-3, 6-4.