Venus’ Open Title a Hand-Me-Down

The hood pulled over her head was gone.

The frown was gone.

The hurt was gone.

In their place: an air of invincibility, teeth showing brightly in a radiant smile and head and arms held high in celebration.

It was a jubilant Venus Williams who skipped and strutted about Saturday night, a far different Williams than the one who sulked and slumped dejectedly in her seat a year ago as younger sister Serena carried off the silver trophy that goes to the U.S. Open winner.

Her 6-4, 7-5 victory over Lindsay Davenport in the U.S. Open final before 23,217 in Arthur Ashe Stadium gave the 20-year-old Williams the title she believed should have been hers 12 months ago.

It also earned her a check for $800,000 and gave her the confidence to verbally spar with President Clinton during a hilarious phone conversation in which she complained about her tax bracket.

“Where’d you go?” she playfully asked Clinton, who left the National Tennis Center during a rainstorm that delayed the championship match for 90 minutes.

“He said, ‘You really worked hard,’ ” Williams said later, relating the conversation. “I said, ‘See, I did work hard and I want to keep this [check] for me.’

“ ‘I’m a good citizen.’ ”

Williams’ victory, in which she stormed back from a 4-1 deficit in the first set, was her 26th in a row, a streak in which she has dropped only five sets and won five consecutive tournaments.

Williams, who has not lost since Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario of Spain defeated her in the French Open quarterfinals June 6, will next try to add to her summer haul by winning an Olympic gold medal.

The third-seeded Williams won the U.S. Open by rallying from a 5-3 third-set deficit against top-seeded Martina Hingis in the semifinals and then beating the second-seeded Davenport in the final.

“It’s always really exciting, when you win a Grand Slam tournament, to know you performed your best and beat the best performers too,” Williams said. “I did it at Wimbledon, and I did it here.”

Her latest title continued a remarkable climb back from the anger and disappointment of a year ago, when Williams lost to Hingis in the U.S. Open semifinals, then watched glumly as her sister defeated Hingis in the final.

“Of course I wasn’t happy,” Williams said of that day, though she has insisted she was not displeased that her sister won but rather was peeved about losing to Hingis. “I played horribly.

“I mean, come on, if you had lost a match like that, you hadn’t given it your best, you hadn’t stepped up, how do you think you would feel? I still haven’t gotten over that loss.

“Ever since then, I’ve changed my attitude.”

After Serena defeated her for the first time last fall, Venus disappeared from the WTA Tour, blaming tendinitis in her wrists.

A planned sabbatical of a few weeks turned into six months, during which time her father, Richard, suggested that Venus might retire from tennis, or at least sit out the rest of this year.

She returned in May, after undergoing everything from acupuncture to massage therapy to get well. She started slowly, losing to Sanchez-Vicario in Paris, but she hasn’t lost since.

Her victory at Wimbledon ended the retirement talk, of course, and it did wonders for her self-esteem, pulling her even with Serena in number of Grand Slam titles won.

Now she’s one up.

And even though the WTA computer says Hingis is still No. 1, Williams knows better.

“I’ve always felt like the best player,” she said. “I think it’s just about an attitude, the kind of attitude you take out there toward your game, toward everything, and it paid off.”

It paid off Saturday after she started slowly.

“She was playing at a high level,” Williams said of Davenport, who had ended the sisters’ hopes of an all-Williams final by defeating Serena, 6-4, 6-2, in the quarterfinals. “But I think I was giving her exactly what she wanted.

“I sat down at 4-1 and thought about it. I said, ‘I can’t feed her like this.’ I was just giving her the spoon, so I had to change up.”

With Richard, Serena and other family members watching courtside, Serena smiling and cheering, Venus broke Davenport’s serve in the sixth game to begin a string of six consecutive games that gave her the first set and put her ahead, 1-0, in the second.

In the first U.S. Open final matching U.S.-born women since 1979, when Tracy Austin defeated Chris Evert, Davenport wilted in the face of Williams’ speed and power, losing for the fifth time in their last six meetings.

“Venus was playing great,” Davenport said. “She forced me to play better and I couldn’t do it.”

Over the last three months, Davenport is hardly alone.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

U.S. Open

Men’s Final

1 p.m. today, Channel 2

Pete Sampras (4) vs. Marat Safin (6)