High noon for Novotna challenge

ON THE face of it things could not be going much better for Jana Novotna. Having reached only her third career Grand Slam final she is already guaranteed of her highest-ever world ranking (two) when the World Tennis Association (WTA) issues its new list on Monday. She says she is enjoying her tennis more now than at any other time in the 10 years since she entered the top 50.

Scratch the surface, though, and it is readily apparent just how important this afternoon's Wimbledon final against Martina Hingis is to the 28-year-old Czech. Time is running out on Novotna's bid to earn a place in the sport's history books.

The 16-year-old she plays today is so far ahead in the ranking list at the moment that it would take something approaching a miracle for her to be caught over the next six to nine months.

"When she has won a Grand Slam, let her sit back and talk about it," said Arantxa Sanchez Vicario of Novotna prior to their semi-final. The Spaniard has won one US and two French Open titles.

The sense of urgency has been heightened by the remarkable emergence of so many youngsters over the past year led, obviously, by Hingis and Anna Kournikova.

Novotna, widely perceived by her peers to be an arrogant player, has said that her career has been put in a new perspective by the ongoing illness of her father Frank who, has phoned his daughter each evening.

The ease with which she plays the serve and volley game has always marked her out as a potential winner of these championships and never has that game looked more sharply honed than over the past 12 days.

It is only on the baseline that she has looked vulnerable, just a third of attempted winners have come off for her from the back of the court. It is by keeping her there that Hingis would seem to be most certain of denying Novotna her dream.

The teenager, of course, has already both won a major title (this year's Australian Open) and reached the number one spot.

She already has the technical skills and highly varied game to beat her opponent today but her service remains a liability on this surface and one which Novotna will need to aggressively exploit.

The youngster has also demonstrated just the sort of big-time temperament that Novotna has specifically shown herself to lack over the years. Most famously her brain went walkabout at 6-7, 6-1, 4-1 and 40-30 up in the 1993 final here with Steffi Graf.

On Thursday after sweeping into the final with a crushing defeat of Sanchez Vicario she claimed that she is a very different person to the one who threw the match away that day.

If not she faces the prospect of her second Wimbledon final appearance ending in tears on a Royal shoulder.