Coach's Corner

One Dusenberg. One Porsche. Thirteen Mercedes Benzes. And we're not talking about your garden variety street trash you see on N. Lamar. These are huge, $100,000 machines, or priceless vintage cars. Toss in a Dodge Viper RT110, six Rolls Royces, five Bentleys, and two huge Beemers. So the question is, where are we? Monte Carlo? An exotic automobile museum? Okay, give up? This is the first two rows of cars, that's 32 out of 33 autos, in the parking lot of a tennis tournament, Palm Springs style. Unlike the USTA tennis center in Flushing Meadows, site of the U.S. Open, the Hyatt Grand Champions Hotel, home to the Newsweek Champions/Evert Cup, is not a place overly concerned with Jacksonian democracy. The diamond-studded resort is, indeed, everything a gilded sultan could ever imagine. Hundred-foot palm trees sway majestically over the white stucco hotel. Each balcony (rooms start at $400) is adorned with colorful flower boxes, filled with brilliant, purple bougainvilleas. Gay flags flap peacefully above the numerous fountains and bridges. The grass, a soft carpet of verdant zoysia, cushions the footsteps of Guccis and Cole-Hahns. The lush, green lawn provides a movie-quality contrast to the reddish, snowcapped Santa Rosa mountains. Two "municipal" golf courses surround the grounds. Not - need I say it - your average muni. Finely clad young fellows greet the car, depositing your common Ping bag into a pristine, green and white golf cart with a removable windshield, an onboard computer, and icy water. Want to hit some balls first? The driving range is ready, with nice piles of white balls waiting. A round of golf costs $125, though driving range balls are, the starter notes, "included."

I think you get the picture, so enough of the travel brochure. There is serious work to be done at this tournament. The winners of this event read like a roll call of the great champions of our time: Connors, Evert, Tanner, Noah, Becker, Edberg, Courier, Navratilova, Chang, Seles, Sampras, Graf, and this year, the Heir to The Crown of past women greats, 18-year-old Martina Hingis.

Ah yes, Steffi Graf, the most dominant tennis player, male or female, in the history of the game. Graf, 186 consecutive weeks as the world's number one player, beating Jimmy Connors by 29 weeks. Graf, 332 total weeks as number one in the world. Graf, winner of each Grand Slam at least four times, a feat never approached by any other woman.

Graf. Doesn't it seem like she's been gone, recovering from major knee surgery, for more than nine months? Graf, once a teenage wonder herself, no longer looks like a kid. Her face, drawn and cautious, shows the emotional and physical minefield she's traversed the past two years. The international tabloid hyenas, feasting on the flesh of her father's extramarital sex life. An ugly tax probe into her father's financial matters, resulting in Herr Graf landing in a German prison, where he still resides. Finally, a probe into her own financial affairs. Toss in her knee injury, preceded by an impressive assortment of nagging but debilitating hurts. Add the coup d'etat of Hingis stealing her proprietary number one ranking. It's been a trying period. This is her first major test since the injury. The world-wide media is on hand, hoping for a look at the past, for Steffi's time is, clearly, past.

It's been the curse of woman's tennis that its modern stars have never - due to tragedy and bad luck - been able to compete in their primes. Graf's arrival on the tennis scene coincided with the twilight of Evert and Navratilova. Graf's natural rival, Monica Seles, was psychologically and physically destroyed by a courtside knife attack. Though Graf has defeated Hingis five times, the still adolescent Hingis really rose in a vacuum created by a distracted, injured, and physically past her prime Graf and a shattered Seles. The huge, bejeweled crowds in the desert hoped for a Hingis/Graf final, unlikely though it may have been.

And it was. Graf cruised impressively through the field - moving easily, blasting her trademark forehand, ripping her biting slice backhand, like she'd never been away - playing better than even she thought was likely. Her march to the semi-finals was, she said, "...much farther than I expected." Even a great champion is human - plagued by the same self doubts as the rest of us. "Maybe," she noted, "maybe, I just didn't believe too much in myself yet." A pulled hamstring forced her to retire in the middle of the third set against the number two player in the world, Lindsay Davenport. It was a good benchmark to gauge her progress. Davenport crushes the ball off of both sides. Davenport is a player. But it ended with an all-too-familiar thud. Another injury. She shrugged her shoulders and sighed. "What else?"

I'm a sentimental old fool. I want Graf to be the best again. I want her to take the very likable Swiss girl and teach her some humility. Make one last stand for the old guard. But, make no mistake, that's all it would be. One last stand. The future's here. The crown, no matter the results of any given tournament, has been passed. This isn't the NBA. Youth will be served. The long reign of Martina Hingis is well under way.