Tennis News and Updates
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Hingis urges Kournikova to think hard about comeback
Martina Hingis, who retired in 2002 before making a successful full-time return to the WTA Tour at the start of this year, warned Russia's Anna Kournikova to be fully prepared before pondering a comeback of her own.
"She'd really have to commit herself and grind it out," Hingis told reporters after revealing Kournikova offered to reprise their doubles partnership that won the 2002 Australian Open title.
"She used to have her mother and a great support team to help her and she doesn't have that now. You can't just play one week and come back. You have to be more professional about it," Hingis said at the Acura Classic, where she is seeded eighth.
The 25-year-old Kournikova, a former world number one doubles player who was ranked in the top 20 in singles from 1998 to 2000, has not played on the tour since cutting her 2003 season short due to a back injury.
She competed this year in the World TeamTennis event and has never officially declared she will not play competitively again.
Hingis played an exhibition with Kournikova last December and says the pin-up Russian must improve before returning.
"She was okay," said the Swiss. "But she would have to train. I don't want to go out there and lose first round."
"It would be great to see her out there.
2006-08-09 17:38:52
Kafelnikov being pursued for $120K in back taxes
Former top-ranked tennis player Yevgeny Kafelnikov is being pursued for an unpaid tax debt of almost $122,000.
The Russian owes the town of Moehlin taxes for 2003 and 2004, as well as for a villa he bought in 2001, the town's financial administrator Christian Gasser said Tuesday.
Gasser confirmed reports in Swiss media that the former French Open and Australian Open champion was being ordered to pay the sum and would have his villa impounded as security.
"We simply needed some guarantee and didn't want to wait too long," he said, adding that Kafelnikov's whereabouts are unknown.
The 32-year-old tennis player won the gold medal in men's singles at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. He was the champion at Roland Garros in 1996 and in Melbourne in 1999.
Kafelnikov retired in 2004 and has since turned his attention to golf and professional poker.
2006-08-09 17:36:50
The King and her courts
Billie Jean King seldom sounds light-headed or giddy, but she was both during a teleconference with reporters last week after the announcement that the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, N.Y. -- site of the U.S. Open and a public facility the other 50 weeks of the year -- would be named after her. The ceremony is scheduled for opening night of the Open, Aug. 28.
The U.S. Tennis Association passed up millions of dollars in potential naming rights to honor 62-year-old King, which got me thinking. During the call, I asked King whether she could possibly put into words what the naming was worth symbolically. "I've been racking my brain for any other facility I've been to to cover an elite sporting event that's been named after a woman," I said.
"Have you come up with any?" she asked me. And then she answered the question.
"I don't know. I know it's tangible. I know there's a focus now. I know being a woman, I'm very proud. I want it to send a message and have an echoing effect for other people, but particularly for girls or women, that they need to dream big and go for it as well and that anything is possible. Because I would never -- I mean, I would never in a trillion years -- think that this would have happened to a woman."
So I racked my brain some more. I remembered covering the U.S. summer swimming championships at the Tracy Caulkins Competition Pool at the Centennial Sportsplex in Nashville, Tenn., named for the 1984 Olympic triple gold medalist. That was it.
I went to Internet search engines next, entering every conceivable keyword combination. Gyms named after women & pools named after women & arenas named after women & rinks named after women& sports facilities named after women & women's names on sports facilities.
I was looking for facilities named after athletes -- not, with all due respect, former P.E. teachers, administrators or big-money donors' wives, no matter how deserving. And I wasn't going to count the Mia Hamm and Joan Benoit Samuelson buildings on the Nike campus, which are monuments to their accomplishments but also to a corporate connection.
Here's what I found in my very brief, unscientific, incomplete survey:
• Dorothy Hamill Skating Rink, Greenwich, Conn.
• Janet Evans Swim Complex, Fullerton, Calif.
• Floy Lewis Bakes Field House, Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pa.
• Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center (a youth/community fitness complex), East St. Louis, Ill.
• Kristine Lilly Field, Wilton (Conn.) High School.
Obviously, bricks and mortar haven't kept up with reality. Come to think of it, I haven't seen a lot of statues of female athletes, either. Those are traditional, serious, masculine, literally carved-in-stone ways to honor someone, while women get to hang their names on gymnastics and skating moves.
Why does it matter? King answered that question for me, inadvertently, during an interview last year at a World Team Tennis benefit. As usual, she was asking me as many questions about my life as I could get in about hers. She listened to a few of my ideas and said, thoughtfully, "Women tend to think laterally. Men think about moving up." I blinked. She was so right.
Naming rights are considered one of the most effective methods of advertising in the modern-day sports economy, generating dollars and, ergo, power -- something King understands is the root word of empowerment. Having her name on this complex, to be repeated again and again and again as long as the game is played there, is powerful.
It made me wonder why this move is still a novelty in 2006. It made me wish someone would ramp up more renaming campaigns. There might be few better ways to confirm the worthiness of women's sports than to put an athlete's name on a place that will outlive her.
Years from now, hopefully, kids will take it for granted.
2006-08-09 17:34:43
