Baseline boredom looms

STEFFI GRAF's fifth WTA Tour championships title, achieved with a five set victory over Martina Hingis in New York on Sunday night, lifts her another notch higher in the estimation of tennis historians but leaves a few questions about the state of women's tennis.

The collective wisdom among those promoting the Corel WTA Tour is that this is a period of great optimism, with a new generation of youngsters coming up ready to take the world's top earning sport for women into a brave new era.

Heading that generation is Hingis, he 16 year old Swiss who has made phenomenal progress over the last three months and whose passage to the final of the Chase Championships has taken her to fifth in the year ending women's rankings (she is listed as number four, but with four players above her Monica Seles and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario are joint number two).

Graf cited Hingis, the beaten New York semi finalist Iva Majoli and Chanda Rub in, who narrowly failed to qualify for the 16 woman championships, as the flag carriers of the new generation.

Yel new many not necessarily mean better. The appeal of Graf's match against Hingis, which the German won 6-3, 4-6, 6-0, 4-6, 6-0, was in the clash of styles. Both are effectively baseliners but with Graf favouring slice on her backhand while Hingis hits through hers with two hands. Both are keen to bring their opponent to the net, but in different circumstances.

The danger with the new generation is that they all play the same way. An extreme example of this came in the first round match between Majoli and Anke Huber - both players blasted the ball from the baseline, there were two drop shots and not one volley.

It did not make for great viewing, and such matches are not rare.

To this extent, Graf's continued presence at the top of the tree and the revival of Jana Novotna at the age of 28 could sustain the women's game for another couple of years. Novotna in particular is the last world class player comfortable at the net in singles.