Hingis Headlines Impressive Field

Take two for Martina Hingis and Lindsay Davenport begins this week at the estyle.com Classic, which starts today at the Manhattan Tennis Club in Manhattan Beach.

The event features eight of the top 10 female tennis players in the world, including U.S. Open champion Serena Williams, who won the tournament last year. The tournament includes day and night matches through Saturday and a Sunday afternoon final.

No seeded players are scheduled to play singles matches today. Tonight’s match features Chanda Rubin against Julie Halard-Decugis of France. In doubles, Hingis and Nathalie Tauziat of France play Conchita Martinez of Spain and Patricia Tarabini of Argentina in the last match of the day session on the Stadium Court.

Hingis and Davenport, ranked No. 1 and 2 in the world, will look to rebound from last week’s losses at the Acura Classic.

Davenport, who won the tournament two years ago but lost in the semifinals last year, decided to play in the estyle.com Classic last Thursday after her second-round loss to Anna Kournikova. Hingis lost in straight sets in the quarterfinals to Amy Frazier.

Monica Seles, who lost to Venus Williams on Sunday in the final of the Acura Classic, has been bothered by a blister on her left hand but will use this event as another tuneup before the U.S Open, which begins Aug. 28. She practiced with Hingis at La Costa early last week but had to stop after 30 minutes when the blister burst. Seles, seeded third, had not been practicing on off days between matches and is happy to have a first-round bye.

“Hopefully, I can start Tuesday or Wednesday,” she said Sunday at La Costa. “I really need to give it a good two days off. I don’t want this to go on to the U.S Open. The two days off after my first-round match here really helped a lot.”

The top four seeded players at Manhattan Beach get a first-round bye and second-round matches will probably start Wednesday.

The estyle.com Classic completes a two-week WTA tour swing through Southern California. Seles and Spaniards Martinez and Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario and Sandrine Testud of France will play at both events. But Jennifer Capriati, Kournikova and top-10 players Venus Williams and Mary Pierce, this year’s French Open champion, will not play at Manhattan Beach.

“These California tournaments are always very strong,” Seles said. “It is just really good preparation for the Open.”

Serena Williams followed her victory in this tournament by winning the U.S Open last year. Manhattan Beach will be Serena’s first tournament appearance since losing to her older sister, Venus, in the Wimbledon semifinals last month. She is not satisfied with her results after winning only a singles title in Hanover, Germany, this year.

“I’m not very happy with the way I played this year. I think I could have won a few more tournaments and done a little better,” she said. “I still have the year left, and we’re going into the last [part of the] season. So I feel that I’m going to do a lot better. The second portion of last year, after the U.S Open, I was really focused.”

Last year’s tournament was sponsored by Acura, which sponsored this year’s La Costa event. The Manhattan Beach tournament was called the Acura Classic from 1995 through last year. Now called the estyle.com Classic, it will draw about 80,000 people to a stadium with a capacity of 5,324. Total prize money will be $535,000.

The top eight seeded players, in order, are Hingis, Davenport, Seles, Martinez, Serena Williams, Tauziat, Sanchez-Vicario and Testud. Germany’s Anke Huber, who was seeded seventh, withdrew from the tournament Thursday citing tendinitis in her right elbow, moving Sanchez-Vicario to seventh and Testud to eighth.