Cheap Seats

Creating a lot of racket

It’s the era of the brat pack in women’s tennis, as teenage prodigies push their elders out of the way, talking trash to them, one another and everyone else.

ESPN the Magazine’s Curry Kirkpatrick compiled highlights:

Anna Kournikova, on stories she’s hockey star Sergei Fedorov’s girlfriend: “Sure, Sergei wishes.”

Martina Hingis, on her competition: “Rivalries? Look at the rankings. I’m like 3,000 points up. There are no rivalries for me.”

Iva Majoli, after Venus Williams beat her and announced that she could have done it a year before: “Both Williams sisters need to change their attitude. They look at you like you’re nobody …”

Chris Evert, who counsels Hingis, and Pam Shriver, who advises Venus Williams, are trying to smooth the rough edges but concede they have their work cut out.

“What’s a good acronym for this bunch,” asks Shriver, “TABSAW? Teenage Babes At War?

“I didn’t mind when I told Martina I was once ranked No. 3 in the world and she said, ‘You? No. 3?’ Like I was some Martian. But when she goes after Steffi Graf, one of our greatest champions… . That’s a bit much.”

Look him up in lost and found

Maybe somewhere on the Claret Jug that goes to the British Open champion there should be a notation regarding Martin Holmes.

Holmes, a 10-handicap golfer, is the spectator who found Mark O’Meara’s lost ball at the sixth hole at Royal Birkdale on Saturday and inadvertently helped him win his first British Open.

O’Meara thought he had to play a provisional ball from 230 yards and expected to wind up with a double-bogey 6. But thanks to Holmes, he escaped with a bogey and went on the next day to win the title.

“At the time, his caddie gave me a signed ball as gratitude but I feel that, now he’s won the title, I deserve something more as a memento,” Holmes said Tuesday. “Maybe he could send me a box full.”

Maybe you could just do the right thing without having to be rewarded.

Everybody into the pool

The Goodwill Games has hung banners from funky Greenwich Village to the affluent Upper West Side, plastered its logo on city buses and done everything in its power to paint the town Ted.

But Ted Turner’s sporting extravaganza is, if not lost in New York, in danger of being overlooked. Games highlights playing on the giant television screen atop a Times Square skyscraper Tuesday morning took a distant second among pedestrians to a fallen crane and its debris at a nearby construction site.

“In New York, there’s so much excitement - buildings falling down,” said Jesus Santiago, a security officer downtown. “A little game of basketball, it’s nothing. We watch it on TV. If the Knicks are playing the Bulls, that’s different.”

Said Santiago, reflecting on the near-100 degree temperatures in the city: “If I could go to the Goodwill Games or the pool, I think I choose the pool.”

The last word …

“Apparently, it comes down to this: Once you have been hung with the nickname ‘The Great Satan’, it’s tough to get folks on your side.”

- Patrick Reusse of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, on the celebrations in parts of the Middle East after Iran’s World Cup victory over the U.S. soccer team.