Women’s Tennis Has Born-Again Star

Lindsay Davenport, a good sport, has just lost a terrific tennis match to Monica Seles but hasn’t lost her sense of humor. A car, she says. A car company sponsors this Manhattan Beach tournament and the winner gets a car. “I won it last year and I didn’t get one. Come on!” Davenport kids. “I think I deserve one!”

They say women’s tennis is unbalanced, needs more stars, but it isn’t so. Martina Hingis is not unbeatable, as Davenport has just demonstrated. And we haven’t heard the last of Steffi Graf. And on a given day, a Mary Pierce, a Jana Novotna, an Iva Majoli, an Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, certainly a Davenport can defeat absolutely anybody.

Oh, and look who’s back.

Our old friend Monica.

And I don’t mean the friend Monica played by Courteney Cox on “Friends.”

Seles, I mean. Remember her? I sure do. I remember when she was 15 years old, and she defeated the great Chris Evert in a match in Houston, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4, whereupon the great racket raconteur, Ted Tinling, the tennis historian and fashion plate, turned to nobody in particular and declared on Monica’s behalf, “She’s the next.”

The next Evert, he meant. The next Navratilova, King, Austin, Goolagong, Gibson, Connolly, Moody, Marble, take your pick, pick a generation. Seles was tomorrow’s star today. In the year before turning 18, she won $2,457,758, which was more money than anybody, male or female, had won in a single year on tour.

Free automobiles aren’t necessary for anyone in that tax bracket. The keys to an Acura that were given Sunday to the tournament winner came along with a check for 80 grand, which upped Seles’ lifetime tennis earnings to $9,483,795. Only three women have ever hit eight figures. Sanchez Vicario, Graf and that “other” Martina, the old-timer, Navratilova, each topped the 10-mil mark.

No wonder Seles applauded the crowd--and it her--with her racket Sunday, free hand against the strings.

For a day, at least, she was a winner again.

“I’ve been waiting a while for this, you know?” Monica said.

Not once in 1997 had Seles won a tournament. Not a Grand Slam event, not a not-so-grand event. The arrow on her graph had zigged and zagged and taken a plunge, like the stock market’s. Here was the U.S. Open coming up in a few weeks, for which Seles could be seeded as high as No. 2, and was anybody talking up Monica’s chances of winning it? No way.

That’s why her hard-earned 5-7, 7-5, 6-4 victory over Davenport--24 hours after the automobile fancier from Newport Beach had driven Hingis right out of the South Bay--meant so much to Seles, and to tennis.

Think about it:

Seles against Davenport . . . and you aren’t sure who’s the favorite.

“I think it’s great that she’s playing great tennis again,” said Davenport, generously, after having a match point get away from her. “She’s back.

“The last time I played Monica, I had match point and she hit a winner and came back and beat me. I don’t know what to try next time.”

They met in Sydney, early last year.

Seles had begun her comeback from a 27 1/2-month absence. She was gone because . . . well, you know why. No point rehashing that again. Suffice it to say, Seles was not the same. One day, a girl is beating Chris Evert, and next thing you know, she is a grown woman and can’t beat Katerina Studenikova.

Knee problems, shoulder problems, a broken ring finger . . . stuff happened. Monica’s father became seriously ill. She declined to have anyone but him be her coach.

You can make $9 1/2 million playing tennis, yet life won’t necessarily be what you would like it to be.

Oh, for those frivolous days, disappearing before the 1991 Wimbledon final for no apparent reason, showing up in New Jersey at something called the Pathmark Tennis Classic for a $300,000 appearance fee, posing for photographers there with a dog under her arm. . . . “Zsa Zsa Gabor would have been proud, darling,” tennis wag Bud Collins was moved to say.

We have seen Monica Seles, the kid.

Monica, the star.

Monica, the flake.

Monica, the victim.

Monica, the survivor.

And now we have Monica, the winner, back. Women’s tennis needs stars? No, women’s tennis has stars.