Venus' Open Title a Hand-Me-Down

By J.A. Adande

Sept. 10, 2000 12 AM PT

NEW YORK —

This is what happens when a player with so much talent adds an equal measure of resolve.

This is what happens when Venus Williams decides she doesn’t want to lose anymore.

She doesn’t.

Williams has been running things this summer, straight-out Tigerizing the WTA Tour.

Her 6-4, 7-5 victory over Lindsay Davenport in the U.S. Open final Saturday gave her a pretty nice companion to the Wimbledon singles championship she won in July.

She has won 26 consecutive matches, pulling in $1,757,858 in prize money over that stretch.

And it’s all in her head.

“I’ve always felt like the best player,” Williams said. “It’s just about an attitude, the attitude that you take out there toward your game, toward everything.”

The change came about after a bitter loss to Martina Hingis in the U.S. Open semifinals last year, forcing her to watch as younger sister Serena won the family’s first Grand Slam championship.

When she first ascended to prominence, “I think maybe I was expecting people to give matches to me,” Williams said. “Maybe that’s what it was. It seemed like I would get to the point where I could take the match, but I didn’t, and I would lose it. I think now I’ve just gotten to the point where I go out and take it, not just hope that someone will give it to me by making mistakes.”

As Williams told another listener: “I’ve become a totally different person from last year. Last year, I guess I didn’t have it in my heart, but now I’m OK.”

That quote was directed to President Clinton, who called Williams after the match.

Honestly, the phone conversation was better than the match itself, which was a dramatic drop-off from Williams’ thrilling semifinal victory over Hingis Friday.

Davenport’s overall effort wasn’t anywhere close to her best. In the beginning, Davenport just cranked back and fired away, scoring winners all over the court and breaking Williams twice to take a 4-1 lead in the first set. Then she went into that sloppy mode she sometimes enters, hitting shots all over the grounds of the National Tennis Center, allowing Williams to come back and win in straight sets.

When you convert only three of 15 break points, as Davenport did, you don’t deserve to win. Then again, what was Williams doing giving her 15 break points in the first place? It wasn’t sterling tennis on either side, but Williams did enough to get the job done.

Clinton was in attendance for the second men’s semifinal, but he left during a rain delay that pushed back the start of the women’s final.

So Williams’ first question was, “What happened? Where’d you go?”

Clinton said he tried to wait out the rain delay, but “I had to come home to have dinner with Hillary,” so he watched the women on TV.

Venus was on serve the whole time they were on the phone, dictating the direction of the conversation, firing away all kinds of questions.

“How did everything go at this Millennium Summit?” Williams asked, referring to the historic United Nations gathering of world leaders from more than 150 nations that also tied up the New York streets.

“Oh, it was great,” Clinton said.

“We suffered through traffic, you know,” Williams said. “While you guys shot straight through. That’s OK, though. You’ve got special privilege.”

She wanted to see him exercise that power for one special request: “Can you lower my taxes, please?”

Clinton, as politicians are known to do, tried to laugh off the issue, but Williams was relentless.

“So what can you do about it?” she asked.

“Not much, right now,” Clinton responded.

“We’re working on it.”

He said he’d like to have a special exemption for athletes, all but placing the next question on a tee for Williams.

“Should I read your lips?” she asked.

Not all of Williams’ questions were job-related. Williams asked about Chelsea (“She’s doing great.”) and Buddy the dog (“He’s doing great too.”) Williams says she doesn’t watch much television, but apparently she watched enough during her two weeks at the U.S. Open to get a feel for the nasty tone of the New York Senate race.

“Say good luck to Hillary, also, because I’ve been seeing these Rick Lazio commercials,” Williams said. “I’m thinking, ‘Man, this is unbelievable.’ ”

If the rest of the WTA players could talk to Clinton, they might want to petition him for an executive order to stop Venus.

Her mix of speed and power makes her one of the few players who can dictate play even when she’s on the run, defensively.

“Obviously, she covers the court very well, much differently from other players,” Davenport said. “You know, a player like Arantxa [Sanchez-Vicario] just gets it back, where Venus runs it down and hits it hard back.”

The computer still has her ranked No. 3, because she missed most of the first half of the year because of injuries. But after this run, after winning Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, it’s pretty hard to call her anything other than the best player in the world.

“I’ve done my best,” Williams said. “Really, I have.”

After beating the best the field had to offer her--including the top two ranked players on successive days--Williams doesn’t have to worry about beating up on herself. She has conquered her own deficiencies, which was the biggest challenge of all.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Venus on Fire

A look at Venus Williams’ 26-match winning streak:

WIMBLEDON

* First round--d. Kveta Hrdlickova, 6-3, 6-1

* Second round--d. Ai Sugiyama, 6-1, 6-4

* Third round--d. Nathalie Dechy, 6-0, 7-6 (4)

* Fourth round--d. Sabine Appelmans, 6-4, 6-4

* Quarterfinals--d. Martina Hingis, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4

* Semifinals--d. Serena Williams, 6-2, 7-6 (3)

* Final--d. Lindsay Davenport, 6-3, 7-6 (3)

STANFORD