Sanchez Vicario

NEW YORK -- This was not the finest hour, or two, of women's tennis.Two matches. Two routs. Even CBS-TV pulled the plug.No. 1 Monica Seles and No. 5 Arantxa Sanchez Vicario easily won their semifinals yesterday to advance to this afternoon's U.S. Open final.Seles, the defending champion, needed only 78 minutes to defeat No. 7 Mary Joe Fernandez, 6-3, 6-2. Sanchez Vicario got in a 64-minute workout in defeating No. 9 Manuela Maleeva-Fragniere, 6-2, 6-1.But don't despair. Today's final between Seles and Sanchez Vicario might be wonderful.

NEW YORK -- This is for all those who say that women's tennis is dull, that upsets come about as often as leap years, that the Grand Slam semifinals are nothing more than clubby, chummy get-togethers involving Gaby and Steffi and Monica and Martina.The party has been crashed.Yesterday, another seed came tumbling out of the draw.Say goodbye to Steffi Graf.The No. 2 seed, the reigning Wimbledon champion, the player whose career was literally launched on the hard courts of Flushing Meadow, was beaten by No. 5 Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, 7-6 (7-5)

MONACO -- Aaron Krickstein, the last of the seeded players in the Monte Carlo Open, moved into the final yesterday with a 6-1, 6-1 rout of Goran Prpic.Krickstein meets Austrian Thomas Muster, who beat Frenchman Arnaud Boetsch, 7-5, 6-4, in the other semifinal. Today's final is a best-of-five.Krickstein's climb to the final of this clay court tournament has included a victory over No. 1 seed Boris Becker on Thursday.Prpic took the opening game then didn't win another until eight games later, at 2-1 in the second set."

Capriati, P. McEnroe roll in Australian OpenAmerican Jennifer Capriati, 15, won her Australian Open debut today, defeating Natalia Medvedeva of Ukraine, 6-2, 6-0 in 44 minutes. Patrick McEnroe, stuck this time on the same side of the draw as older brother John, joined two-time champion Ivan Lendl as an easy, straight-sets winner in the first round of the tournament, the year's first Grand Slam tennis event.Patrick McEnroe defeated Italy's Massimo Cierro, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4. Lendl beat Australian Richard Fromberg, 6-4, 6-2, 6-2. Becker of Germany stopped Jan Gunnarsson, 6-1,6-4,6-2.

NEW YORK -- Martina Navratilova was dressed in a floral shirt, black jeans and white sneakers, now, darting to the television studios, answering the same round of questions about her age, her career and her summer.She had left another younger opponent beaten and breathless in a third set in a U.S. Open quarterfinal yesterday. It wasn't her greatest show at Louis Armstrong Stadium, but she still hit the notes that have made her career a long-running symphony. Thirty-four years old and seeded No. 6, she beats a drum of volleys, this time pounding a 19-year-old named Arantxa Sanchez Vicario into the hard court for a 6-7 (6-8)

NEW YORK -- The young Martina Navratilova doesn't play a match like this. She gets up a break and seizes the moment. She piles point on top of point and leaves an opponent gasping for air.But Navratilova is 34 now, and her confidence is as fragile as her serve. She punches the air with a fist when things go well, but when she floats a second serve and misses a volley, she hangs her head in disgust.Still, she remains a factor at the U.S. Open.Yesterday, she struggled in a fourth-round match but finally defeated Manuela Maleeva-Fragniere, 7-6 (7-5)

WASHINGTON -- After going winless in four championship matches this year, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario hopes her title at the Virginia Slims of Washington gives her a much-needed mental boost going into this week's U.S. Open.Capping off a week of near flawless tennis, Sanchez Vicario fought off a tough challenge from No. 6 seed Katerina Maleeva in a 6-2, 7-5 championship win yesterday before 6,582 at the William H.G. FitzGerald Tennis Center.Sanchez Vicario earned the top prize of $70,000, but moreimportantly she goes into the U.S. Open with her first tournament win since July 1990 when she won the Virginia Slims of Newport.

WASHINGTON -- Each said the other let her fingers do th talking and it must have left some wondering what women's tennis is coming to."Arantxa has this way of pointing her finger at the linesmen to influence their calls," said No. 5 seed Zina Garrison, after losing 6-3, 6-2 to the top-seeded Arantxa Sanchez Vicario in the quarterfinals of the Virginia Slims of Washington.It was a strange complaint, given Garrison herself had made an obscene gesture to the umpire before quickly covering it by clenching her fist.

WASHINGTON -- Women's tennis is deep. So deep. That's what women's tennis players keep saying. And yet upsets, those wonderful unexpected uprisings from the neighborhood of the lower rankings, are rarer than a cool night in August.Last night, one of those cool breezes blew through the Fitzgerald Tennis Center, but it wasn't enough to inspire overachievement.No. 1 seed Arantxa Sanchez Vicario needed just 67 minutes to dispose of Regina Rajchrtova, 6-4, 6-4, in the Virginia Slims of Washington.

Shriver beaten, 6-0, 6-1, in EastbourneArantxa Sanchez Vicario, 19, the French Open champion in 1989 and runner-up this year, crushed Pam Shriver of Lutherville, 6-0, 6-1, on the Eastbourne, England, grass yesterday to reach the semifinals."