U.S. Rolls To Fed Cup Victory
Tennis
The doubles team of Lind say Davenport and Lisa Raymond beat Naoko Kijimuta and Nana Miyagi 6-4, 6-4 Sunday to clinch the United States’ Fed Cup playoff victory over Japan at the Longwood Cricket Club in Brookline, Mass.
The victory kept the United States in Group I for the 1998 Fed Cup, while Japan dropped into Group II.
The United States, which took a 2-0 lead with two singles victories Saturday, completed the sweep of the match when Davenport beat Ai Sugiyama 6-4, 7-6 (7-1) and Kimberly Po beat Naoko Sawamatsu 6-2, 6-4.
Mary Joe Fernandez, one of Saturday’s winners, was unable to compete Sunday because of tendinitis in her right wrist.
Swedish Open
Sweden’s latest ace on the tennis circuit, fourth-seeded Magnus Norman, won his first ATP title, beating Spanish rookie Juan-Antonio Marin 7-5, 6-2 in the Swedish Open at Bastad, Sweden.
Hall of Fame Championships
Sargis Sargsian became the ATP Tour’s first Armenian champion, beating New Zealand’s Brett Steven 7-6 (7-0), 4-6, 7-5 in the final of the Hall of Fame Championships at Newport, R.I.
“I don’t know what happened with my serve today. It just clicked,” said the fifth-seeded Sargsian, who had 17 aces and just two double-faults. “I was serving harder than I have all week.”
Hall honors pioneers
Historic firsts from three different eras were represented Sunday, as the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., inducted three new members.
Maj. Walter Clopton Wingfield, who is credited with patenting the game of lawn tennis in 1874; H.W. “Bunny” Austin, who in 1932 was the game’s first player to wear shorts; and Lesley Turner Bowrey, who played in the first Federation Cup in 1963, were inducted into the Hall of Fame in a ceremony at center court of the Newport Casino.
The Hall of Fame’s list stands at 168 inductees.
Wingfield called his game “sphairistike,” a Greek term for “skilled ball play.” He was a grand promoter and packaged his complete lawn tennis set and “Book of the Game.”
Austin was known primarily as the first player to wear short pants, but he also debuted the Hazell’s racket, an open-throated, “three-branch” model that more closely resembles modern rackets than the others used in his time.
He was also a fine player. Twice he was a Wimbledon finalist, in 1932 and 1938, and is still the last British man to reach the Wimbledon final.
Austin helped the British team win the Davis Cup in 1933 and hold it until 1936. His son, John, accepted in his behalf.