(By Edwin Pope-Miami Herald-April 2, 2000)
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What strange alchemy transforms women's finals between evenly-matched players into runaways on Key Biscayne?
Let the Ericsson Open know when you figure it out. Female championships often steal tennis' biggest shows, but the Lipton-turned-Ericsson has included only two truly ferocious female finals in 16 years -- Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario over Steffi Graf in 1993, and Venus Williams over sister Serena last year.
Nobody can even guess anymore who's going to be doing the running away. If anyone was to walk all over anyone else Saturday, it figured to be Lindsay Davenport over Martina Hingis, after Davenport had taken Hingis to the woodshed five straight times.
Nope. In Davenport's own words, Hingis ``jumped all over'' her in this 6-3, 6-2 rout of only 58 minutes' duration.
Usually Key Biscayne women's finals fans yell ``Martina!'' or ``Chris!'' or ``Steffi!'' or ``Venus!'' If this keeps up, they are going to be yelling ``Refund!''
It isn't luck, either. It's simply bizarre.
All the way through Hingis' 4-2 lead in the second set, sun-blasted fans kept thinking, OK, it was this way in Indian Wells for a while, and the same thing will happen here.
Not this day.
Not when Davenport's favorite forehand stroke was flying everywhere but into the Stadium Court stands.
Not with Hingis growing ever more confident against a repeat of their California match two weeks ago, when Davenport bullied back to win the last 10 games.
At Saturday's end on Key Biscayne, Davenport could say only, ``I wish I had given the fans a better match.''
Not to worry, Lady D. One-sided distaff finals in the Lipton-turned-Ericsson women's final are as common as Super Bowl blowouts used to be. Runaway winners have ranged from Martina Navratilova to Chris Evert to Graf to Gabriela Sabatini to Monica Seles to Sanchez-Vicario to, yep, Hingis.
Hingis rolled over Seles in 15 games three years ago.
She thinks she's even better now. ``I'm using my body a little bit better.'' And, always, the mind, for one of the game's finer strategists.
True to Key Biscayne tradition, Davenport played right into her opponent's plan. The 6-2 Californian, nearly a head taller than 5-7 Hingis, generates her forehand power with an exaggerated shoulder turn and outlandish racket-head speed. But speed is more of an enemy than an ally when you make four times as many errors as the party across the net -- 40 to 10 in this case.
Sooner or later, Miss Precision is going to get you. No one lambastes Hingis a half-dozen times in a row.
Five, OK, it's an aberration, but Davenport pulled it off.
Six, no way.
Who could possibly beat up that consecutively on the first woman athlete ever to adorn the cover of the men's magazine Gentlemen's Quarterly?
Who could extend the Indian sign to six over the youngest woman athlete (18 then, 19 now) to be cast in wax at Madame Tussaud's Museum in London?
True, some incongruities exist in Hingis' personal life. Her favorite player is Dennis Rodman, while her favorite movies are Forrest Gump and Free Willy.
Otherwise, she is a perfectly normal 19-year-old accumulator of more than $12 million in prize money, including Saturday's $350,000.
Besides, the weather that helped buffet Davenport was blowing perfectly for Hingis.
``Players like Lindsay or Monica or Mary [Pierce] or the Williams sisters can't just overpower me [in this wind],'' Hingis said. ``I have more chances to run and get as many balls back as I can, then try to do something.''
It happened just that way against Davenport. Like it almost always does to someone in these weirdly-one-sided women's finals.