By Now, It’s Clear: Hingis Isn’t No. 1 on the Court

Her hands are the best. Martina Hingis can make the tennis ball zig and zag, wiggle and wobble, hit the farthest, deepest spot on the baseline or make it settle softly an inch over the net. Hingis has gotten herself into fine physical shape, a testament to her fighting spirit and athletic fortitude.

And she still can’t beat Lindsay Davenport.

The computer says Hingis, the 19-year-old from Slovakia, Switzerland and Florida, is the best women’s tennis player in the world. But not even Hingis, who has never been shy about congratulating herself, would put money on Hingis when she plays Davenport.

On Saturday, for the fifth time in a row and the eighth time in the last 10 matches they have played, Davenport beat Hingis. This was for the Indian Wells Tennis Masters Series title. Hingis led the match, 6-4, 4-2, and was two points from a 5-2 lead in the second set. But Hingis got tired, then flustered, then careless, then frustrated and finally she was the loser of 10 consecutive games. Davenport won, 4-6, 6-4, 6-0, and Hingis threw her racket to the ground in frustration.

Some want to call this a rivalry between Hingis and Davenport. But it’s not. Not now at least. Hingis is going to have to win a couple to make it a rivalry.

What we learned Saturday in the desert is that Hingis doesn’t have much to do with who wins when she plays Davenport. If Davenport keeps her head, keeps her cool, keeps her legs moving and her racket back, then Davenport will win.

Quite honestly, Davenport said afterward, if she plays her very best and Hingis plays her very best, “then I will win . . . I have more weapons.”

That is an amazing statement from the ever humble Davenport. She recently moved from Newport Beach to Laguna Beach but didn’t buy a home right on the water.

“You need to make Bill Gates money for those,” Davenport says, laughing. “I don’t want all my money to go to the house.” That tells you so much about Davenport. She doesn’t think or talk or act like a big-time athlete. She is not boastful or cocky. She is in wide-eyed wonderment about this fragile thing called confidence. She thinks she could lose her confidence, which has taken Davenport so long to gather, “in an instant.”

Davenport is bemused by Hingis, the Williams sisters and Anna Kournikova, the precocious teenagers who came to the WTA Tour full of themselves, predicting greatness for themselves, proclaiming themselves the best. Hingis, at least, has backed her words with results. For a good part of three years Hingis has been ranked No. 1, but she clings to that ranking now, knowing it is the product of unfathomable mathematics and not of play on the court. Hingis knows who should be No. 1. She knows it is Davenport.

It is Davenport who has won two of the last three Grand Slam titles and Davenport who can impose her will on Hingis.

Even as she was winning the first set and four of the first six games in the second, Hingis was tiring. Davenport congratulated Hingis on the depth and pace of her shots at first, but for Hingis to sustain that kind of depth and power it is too tiring. Hingis is 5 feet 7, normal sized to most of us, but tiny and getting tinier when it comes to playing Davenport (6-2 1/2), Serena (5-10) and Venus (6-1) Williams, Monica Seles (5-10 1/2) and Mary Pierce (5-10).

“I am getting closer,” Hingis said wistfully. Davenport did win in straight sets in her four most recent victories over Hingis, but to lose this match, which she seemed to control, may be even more dispiriting to Hingis than the straight-set pummelings she recently has absorbed. Hingis said afterward that to beat Davenport “you have to make four points in a game, not just two or three, then you are waiting for something to happen like maybe an angel coming down.”

When Davenport defeated Hingis for the Australian Open title in January, 6-1, 7-5, Hingis said, quite honestly, that she didn’t know how to beat Davenport. This, Davenport says, was a shocking admission and even now Davenport blushes when she receives such a compliment.

In this age of self-promotion and self-congratulation, sometimes it seems as if there is no place for the Lindsay Davenports, no place for patience, no allowing for maturation, no appreciation for modesty.

Davenport is 23 years old and feels bad her mom got stuck with most of the ugly parts of her move from Newport Beach to Laguna Beach because Davenport was stuck in Scottsdale, Ariz., two weeks ago, waiting out a rain-delayed final against Hingis, a final that never was played.

Having already won one each of the U.S. Open, Australian Open and Wimbledon titles, Davenport still shudders at the thought of the French Open because it is played on clay, a surface that can deaden Davenport’s power. She will not proclaim herself the French Open favorite at all.

Tell her that’s not the way of the world, tell her that she seems more of the 19th century than the here and now, tell her that to be hot, to be happening, to be with it she had better start some trash talking and Davenport would probably blush, shake her head in the negative and then go win another title.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.