Women Grab the Spotlight in Southland

Southern California will get a two-week run of women’s tennis, starting Monday and featuring plenty of top players and some confusion.

First up is the Acura Classic at La Costa Resort north of San Diego, starting Monday with day and night matches through Saturday and a Sunday final. It will feature the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 players in the world in Martina Hingis, Lindsay Davenport and Wimbledon champion Venus Williams, and expects to draw about 80,000 to a stadium with a capacity of 6,200. Total prize money is $535,000.

Next, moving north, is the estyle.com Classic, at the Manhattan Tennis Club in Manhattan Beach, starting Aug. 7 with day and night matches through Saturday and a Sunday afternoon final. It will feature many of the same players, among them Hingis, Williams’ sister, Serena, and possibly Davenport. It will draw about 80,000 to a stadium with a capacity of 5,324. Total prize money is $535,000.

The confusion stems from the tournament titles, something fast becoming a challenge to the sanity of fans in most sports.

Last year’s Manhattan Beach event was what this year’s La Costa event is: the Acura Classic. Matter of fact, that was the Manhattan Beach tournament’s name from 1995 through last year. So some who saw Acura take its sponsorship money and head south wondered if the Manhattan Beach event was gone. Not so. It just went from cars to a dot.com.

But the confusion is understandable, especially because the La Costa event in recent years has had, among others, Mazda and Toshiba as sponsors.

Adding to that confusion is that tennis in Southern California this time of year also includes a men’s event at UCLA that has had, in its recent history, three automobile sponsors--Volvo, Infiniti and now Mercedes-Benz.

So, as tennis fans follow the bouncing sponsor as well as the bouncing ball, speculation centers on which event will be taken over by Yugo.

Both women’s tournaments are designated as Tier II events by the women’s tour, which is known these days as the Sanex WTA Tour and may or may not be open in the future to a bid from Yugo. Tier II designation means that total prize money cannot exceed $535,000 and that these events are a notch below nine Tier I events that can award as much as $1.08 million but still rank a notch below the four Grand Slam events.

Hingis has been seeded No. 1 for the Acura at La Costa, and probably will be so at Manhattan Beach, since she remains No. 1 in the world, despite not having won a Grand Slam event since the ’99 Australian Open. Davenport is seeded second at San Diego and, while not committed yet to the Manhattan Beach event that she won in ’96 and ‘98, said Thursday on a media conference call that she is still considering playing it and will decide while at La Costa.

Davenport remains No. 2 in the rankings, while having won two of her three Grand Slams since Hingis’ ‘99 Australian. Davenport won Wimbledon last year and the Australian this year.

The Williams sisters will continue their practice of not playing in the same tour events. Thus Venus will play at La Costa, then will skip the singles when Serena, the ’99 U.S. Open champion, plays at Manhattan Beach.

Mary Pierce, this year’s French Open champion, is scheduled to play at La Costa but not at Manhattan Beach. Two other top draws on the women’s circuit, Monica Seles and Conchita Martinez, will play both events. Arantxa Sanchez Vicario will play at Manhattan Beach only and Jennifer Capriati and Anna Kournikova are, at least at this point, scheduled to play only at La Costa.

Hingis won at La Costa last year and Serena Williams won at Manhattan Beach.