Spain Is No Match for U.S.

Serena Williams is at the airport. You can see her in advertisements up and down the Strip. And the 1999 U.S. Open champion also can be seen at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

Everywhere and nowhere.

It’s a photograph of the youngest Williams sister in the building, not the talented teenager herself. And it’s not as though Serena and Venus Williams pulled out of the Fed Cup at the last minute, either. They never committed to the international women’s team tennis event.

As far back as October, Lindsay Davenport knew Serena Williams probably would not be at the final when U.S. captain Billie Jean King called to ask her how she would feel about playing doubles with Lisa Raymond.

Unlike the American men and Davis Cup, the women can survive--and even win--without a couple of star players. Davenport and Monica Seles put the United States on the brink of another Fed Cup triumph, taking a 2-0 lead Friday in this best-of-five match final against Spain.

In the first match, Seles beat Conchita Martinez, 6-2, 6-3, in 67 minutes, and Davenport followed with a hard-fought win over an inspired Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, 6-2, 1-6, 6-3.

Davenport could clinch the victory today against Martinez. She has not lost to Martinez since 1998 and defeated her, 6-0, 6-1, earlier this month at Philadelphia.

“Obviously, it would be better if it was 1-1,” Sanchez-Vicario said. “They are the favorites. They are much more ahead. Tomorrow will be very difficult for us. We will go there and play our best. Maybe, one out of 10 chances we have. . . . They are a very strong team.”

Said Davenport: “I think maybe the pressure was on us today [Friday]. We were supposed to win 2-0. But now the pressure is on them to hang in there and try to keep the tie alive.”

Sanchez-Vicario came close to creating an element of suspense in the cavernous Events Center, a hard task, considering the building is far too big for this event. The crowd appeared to be about 4,500, not quite half-full here.

Davenport’s ailing right calf started bothering her the longer the match lasted. And a scrambling, retrieving Sanchez-Vicario is hardly ever out of a match, so Davenport tried to shorten the points.

She was able to regroup after losing the second set, 6-1. Davenport rarely gets blown off the court that decisively. She had only lost sets by a 6-1 margin twice in 2000, to Venus Williams in the Palo Alto final and to Amanda Coetzer at Philadelphia.

Davenport turned to King for advice.

“She is pretty good with knowing the players, what they like to hear and what they don’t want to hear and when we want to hear it,” Davenport said. “At the end of the second set, I said, ‘Well, now would be a good time to tell me what you think I need to do.’ She laughed and gave me a good game plan, ‘Let’s go back to hitting them hard and up the middle and serving more to the forehand and into the body.’

“I think that helped. It gave me a good plan to focus on and not worry about what was going on.”

Sanchez-Vicario had one final rally, erasing a 3-1 third-set deficit but let it slip away when she netted two relatively routine forehands in the eighth game. That gave Davenport the service break and a 5-3 lead and she served out the match at 15.

Notes

The 2001 Fed Cup will feature an altered format. The World Group final will have eight teams, and four will receive a bye into that round. In the earlier two rounds, there will be a home-and-away format.