Young Stars Get On-Court Education Hingis, Kournikova In, Williams Out At French Open
On-the-job training on the women’s tennis tour can be a merciless experience for the many children trying to learn while they earn.
The leading lights of the WTA Tour were on display here Thursday at the French Open, in all their youthful resiliency and inexperience.
Martina Hingis, who at 16 is the top-ranked woman in the world, advanced shakily to the third round, indulging her penchant for petulance. Anna Kournikova, 15 going on 35, had little trouble winning and will play Hingis next.
Least experienced among the teens is Venus Williams, 16, whose unlikely path has taken her from the public courts of Compton, Calif., to the leafy grounds of Roland Garros and her first Grand Slam tournament. She was erratic and ineffective against the veteran Natalie Tauziat of France and is out of the tournament after a 5-7, 6-3, 7-5 loss.
“I made too many mistakes and didn’t play the big points well - a lot of double faults,” Williams said, shaking the white beads in her braided hair.
Two former teenage stars, Monica Seles and Mary Pierce, advanced. The third-seeded Seles defeated Sarah Pitkowski of France, 6-3, 7-5, and the 10th-seeded Pierce defeated Patricia Hy-Boulais of Canada, 6-1, 6-3.
Paris always has been friendly toward teenage girls. Arantxa Sanchez Vicario won the title at 17, Seles at 16. Steffi Graf was 18 when she won the first of her five titles here and Jennifer Capriati was still an innocent young girl when she was a semifinalist in 1990.
Of them, Capriati, who already has been through drug and alcohol rehabilitation, most graphically exemplifies the difficulty of growing up in public and in your job.
Hingis, so far, appears able to withstand the rigors of the tour, embracing its grinding competitiveness. Seemingly mature, she nevertheless retains girlish affectations - giggling, making faces and throwing the occasional racket and tantrum.
Hingis is still unbeaten here but looked beatable in her match against Gloria Pizzichini of Italy. She won, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1, running her winning streak to 33 matches, but it was a near thing. Her assessment of her play was frank and coyly self-edited: “I just played like … I don’t want to say a bad word,” Hingis said. “Maybe I took the match a little too easy.”
Pizzichini, at 5 feet, is one of the few players on tour who does not tower above the diminutive Hingis. She reeled off the first four games of the first set.
But Pizzichini fell victim to a deflating double fault while serving to go up 5-3 in the second. Hingis went on to take the second set and wrest the momentum.
Pizzichini admitted she got nervous and choked.
“I thought it could be possible (to win the match),” she said. “When I thought this, the match was finished … I was too afraid to win the match.”
Kournikova, a Russian living in Florida, defeated Sandra Cecchini of Italy 6-2, 6-2.
xxxx Stat of the day Venus Williams double-faulted 13 times, including on match point against France’s Nathalie Tauziat.