| | NEW YORK -- Serena Williams has joined her older sister in
the season-ending Chase Championships.
By winning four titles on the WTA Tour this year, Serena
Williams has become the fourth player to qualify for the Madison
Square Garden tournament, joining Venus Williams, defending
champion Martina Hingis and last year's other finalist, Lindsay
Davenport.
The Williams sisters -- 17-year-old Serena and 19-year-old Venus
-- made history this year when they met in the final of the Lipton
Championships in Key Biscayne, Fla.
The 16-player Chase Championships ends in a best-of-5-sets
final, the only time during the year that women play more than
best-of-3.
Next stop: Fed Cup
With the goal of winning the U.S. Open first and foremost in
their minds, all but one member of the U.S. Fed Cup team are still
alive in the women's draw, less than a week before meeting
Russia for the Fed Cup title.
Lindsay Davenport won her quarterfinal match Wednesday and will face
Fed Cup teammate Serena William in Friday's semifinals. Williams beat another Fed Cup teammate -- Monica Seles -- in Wednesday night's quarterfinals. Venus Williams, the final member of the Fed Cup team, will meet top seed Martina Hingis in the semifinals.
The United States will host Russia next weekend on the campus of
Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
Bhupathi doubled his pleasure
It was a good day for the top-ranked Indian men's duo of Mahesh
Bhupathi and Leander Paes. Early in the day, they became the
first men's doubles team in the Open Era to advance to all four
Grand Slam finals in one season. They defeated the unseeded
pair of Andrei Olhovskiy and David Prinosil, 6-4, 6-3.
Later in the day, Bhupathi teamed with Ai Sugiyama to advance to
the mixed doubles final with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Alexandra
Stevenson and Brian MacPhie.
No French toast this year
With Cedric Pioline and Nicolas Escude remaining in the men's
draw, it marks the first time in the Open Era (since 1968) that
two Frenchmen have reached the U.S. Open quarterfinals.
It is the sixth time that two Frenchmen have reached the
quarterfinals of any Grand Slam event in the Open Era. Most
recently, Thierry Champion and Guy Forget advanced to the round
of eight at Wimbledon in 1991.
You're going to wear that?
Anna Kournikova is the only tennis player to
make the best-dressed list in the October issue of Sport Magazine.
Andre Agassi, Monica Seles, Serena Williams amd Venus Williams
top the worst-dressed list selected by editors of the magazine.
Others named to the best-dressed list include Tiger Woods, Pat
Riley, Derek Jeter, Dominique Dawes, Mike Piazza, Rick Pitino and
Jamal Anderson. The worst-dress list includes Walt Frazier, David
Wells and Shaquille O'Neal.
Star predictions
Talk show host Rosie O'Donnell, baseball
player Rickey Henderson and singer Melissa Etheridge are among 10
contenders still with a chance to win the U.S. Open celebrity
prognosticator race.
Forty celebrities entered the contest to select the men's and
women's singles champion in the 1999 U.S. Open. The second annual
contest featured celebrities ranging from actress Kellie Martin to
former baseball star Tom Seaver.
O'Donnell and Etheridge both picked Andre Agassi and Lindsay
Davenport to win the titles, while Henderson predicted Agassi and
Venus Williams.
Streak snapped
When Mary Pierce won the second set of their
quarterfinal singles match Wednesday, it was the first time in two
years that Lindsay Davenport lost a set at the USTA National Tennis
Center.
Davenport had won 23 consecutive sets, having not dropped a set
as she won the women's singles title last year and nine straight
sets this year.
Although her streak was snapped, Davenport defeated Pierce 6-2,
3-6, 7-5 to advance to the semifinals. | |
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