Tennis Capsules: Venus Williams an easy winner

STANFORD, Calif. — Venus Williams was happy about her dominating performance.

The second-seeded Williams was at the top of her game as she advanced to the finals of the Bank of the West Classic, beating third-seeded Elena Dementieva 6-0, 6-1 on Saturday in a match that lasted just over an hour.

"Things are going well for me but I seem to want more," Williams said. "I just like winning. I don’t care where it is, indoors or outdoors."

Williams joined her sister, Serena, less than an hour after beating Dementieva and the pair advanced to the doubles final with a 6-2, 6-2 victory over Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Nadia Petrova.

"I felt like everything went well for me," Williams said. "I was able to raise my level at the important parts. My plan is to try and keep this level for the rest of the tournament. I felt like I played my best in the last two games when I was able to get into a better rhythm."

The third-ranked Williams, who won for the 10th time in 11 matches, will be seeking her third title at Stanford in her first appearance since 2005. Dementieva, ranked fourth in the world, reached her seventh semifinal of the season.

Williams has not won an outdoor U.S. hardcourt tournament since 2002, something she will try to remedy against France’s Marion Bartoli, who beat Australia’s Samantha Stosur, 6-3, 1-6, 6-1 in the late semifinal match.

"I’m just going to continue developing my game on all fronts," Williams said. "My goal is to peak there (U.S. Open)."

Williams beat Dementieva for the sixth consecutive time and improved to 9-2 against her.

"I don’t have good statistics against Venus," Dementieva said. "She was playing too good for me. She was powerful on the baseline and had a solid first serve. She didn’t give me much of a chance. I might have been able to win a few more points, but not the match."

Dementieva had three winners and 19 unforced errors in the match.

"My percentage of first serves were low and that gave her a chance to attack me. I did not put any pressure on her with my serve. She was playing solid and looked confident on the court."

Bartoli also reached the finals at Stanford last year before losing to Canadian Aleksandra Wozniak.

Ball reaches finals of L.A. Tennis by beating Mayer

LOS ANGELES — Qualifier Carsten Ball reached his first ATP Tour final on Saturday by beating Leonardo Mayer 7-5, 7-6 (3) in the semifinals of the L.A. Tennis Open.

Ball will play in Sunday’s final against the winner of the late match between top-seeded Tommy Haas and sixth-seeded Sam Querrey.

"It’s only a bonus to be in the final, win or lose," Ball said. "To be able to play in an ATP Tour tournament on a Sunday is what we all work for."

It was the first meeting between Ball and Mayer, 22-year-olds who were both playing in their first ATP semifinal.

Ball almost withdrew from the tournament after tweaking his back in the first round of qualifying.

But the trainer worked on the injury and Ball felt better each match he played.

"I’ve definitely pulled it together mentally this week," he said. "I’ve taken my time, and a little confidence and self-belief goes a long way."

Born in Newport Beach, Calif., Ball is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Australia. His father is former Aussie pro Syd Ball, who played in the Australian Open doubles final in 1974.

By reaching Sunday’s final, Ball achieved a career-high ranking of No. 146.

He hasn’t played either Haas, the 2004 and 2006 champion, or Querrey on the tour.

Davydenko, Ferrero advance to Croatia Open final

UMAG, Croatia — Top-seeded Nikolay Davydenko cruised into the final of the Croatia Open on Saturday by beating Jurgen Melzer of Austria 6-1, 6-1.

The Russian will face former No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero, who beat seventh-seeded Andreas Seppi of Italy 6-1, 6-7 (1), 7-5 in the other semifinal.

It was Davydenko’s ninth straight singles victory after winning the German Open last week. His 15th career title took him back into the top 10 at No. 9. He missed nearly four months at the start of the year with injuries, but is 17-3 since the French Open.

"I cannot recall any of my semifinals being so short," Davydenko said after winning in 50 minutes. "Today, I kept my concentration from the beginning. (I) tried to make it faster. I hit many winners, played good at every moment."

The fifth-seeded Ferrero is playing in his first event since reaching the Wimbledon quarterfinals. It is the first time since 2005 that the Spaniard has reached more than one final in the same year. In April, he won Casablanca for his 12th career title — but first since winning Madrid in 2003.

"I am happy with the match, the win, the week. Now, I have to try to win the final," Ferrero said. "I could have shortened the match with a break point at 3-2 in the second set, but he played good."

Bellucci, Beck advance to Swiss Open final

GSTAAD, Switzerland — Unseeded Thomaz Bellucci and Andreas Beck advanced on Saturday to the final of the Swiss Open, where both will seek a first career ATP Tour title.

The 21-year-old Bellucci defeated No. 3 seed Igor Andreev 6-4, 7-5 in one semifinal to continue his run of upsets. The 119th-ranked Brazilian earlier knocked out top-seeded Stanislas Wawrinka and sixth-seeded Nicolas Kiefer, who retired injured in their quarterfinal.

Germany’s Beck beat Marcos Daniel of Brazil 7-6 (3), 6-3 in a match with just one break of serve.

Bellucci beat Andreev despite being ranked 92 places below the 26-year-old Russian, who was a finalist on the clay in Gstaad last year.

The left-handed Bellucci took the only break opportunity of the opening set, in the ninth game, and then held for the lead.

Andreev had a set point at 5-4 in the second against Bellucci’s serve, but the Brazilian held on and broke in the next game before serving out the match.

Beck hit fewer aces and landed fewer first-serves than No. 73 Daniel yet never allowed a break opportunity, dropping just 12 points in 11 service games.

The 23-year-old is ranked a career-high No. 51.

Bellucci and Beck will play for the title Sunday in their first meeting on the ATP Tour.

The winner will become the fifth first-time champion on the tour this season, following Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (Kitzbuehel), Benjamin Becker (Hertogenbosch), Rajeev Ram (Newport) and Jeremy Chardy (Stuttgart).

Dushevina, Hradecka reach Istanbul Cup final

ISTANBUL — Vera Dushevina of Russia will play Lucie Hradecka of the Czech Republic in the Istanbul Cup final.

The fifth-seeded Dushevina beat Timea Bacsinszky of Switzerland 6-2, 6-4, and the eighth-seeded Hradecka defeated Andrea Petkovic of Germany 6-7 (5), 7-5, 7-5 in the semifinals on Saturday.

Dushevina has never won a WTA Tour title, while Hradecka will play her second Tour singles final of the year after finishing as runner-up in Strasbourg.

Grass roots courting brings America back to tennis

DENVER — The magazine cover and accompanying story sit on Kurt Kamperman’s desk — a reminder of where his sport has been and where it cannot go again.

"Is Tennis Dying?" the Sports Illustrated cover asks. Inside is a 5,000-word discourse about the slow, sad dismantling of the Great American Tennis Boom, which blossomed in the days of McEnroe, Connors and Evert back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Since the dark days of that May 1994 magazine cover, leaders in tennis have recalibrated their formula and repackaged their product.

Helped by the new strategies and the fact that it doesn’t take hundreds of dollars to drum up a game — a good sell in a rough economy — the sport has enjoyed 43 percent growth since 2000, to 18.6 million players, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

Another survey released by the U.S. Tennis Association shows even stronger numbers, saying almost 27 million Americans played tennis in 2008 — the largest number in 15 years — and 6 million tried it for the first time.

"Everyone has tennis shoes," says Kamperman, the USTA’s CEO of community tennis. "It helps that there are low-cost, no-cost public courts in almost every city, and you don’t need a lot of equipment to get started."

It also doesn’t eat up an entire afternoon.

"In this economy, to spend 4-5 hours playing a round of golf, it’s a challenge," Kamperman says, "where in 90 minutes, you can get to the courts, get a good workout in and you’re back home."

Indeed, numbers for golf have been flattening over the past few years (down 1.4 million players since 2005, to 28.6 million) while tennis is regaining popularity — the fifth-fastest-growing sporting activity this decade behind pilates, the elliptical machine, lacrosse and, yes, stretching.

While booking a court normally isn’t as costly as making a tee time, tennis is not free: A decent racket can cost $100 or more, but that’s still less than a new set of irons or a new driver, and industry leaders are conscious about keeping the price of a can of balls at less than $3.

Kamperman says plenty of baby boomers who helped create the tennis craze are sending their kids off to school and now have time to rediscover what they love about the sport. The Tennis Industry Association reports a 30 percent increase in adult racket shipments since 2003.

That number balloons to 88 percent for junior rackets. After struggling with the formula for decades, the USTA may have finally come up with a workable plan to get more kids interested in a game that has been notoriously difficult to learn, especially compared to soccer, swimming and basketball.

"They’re out there playing the same game, with the same size court and the same rules as Venus and Serena Williams at Wimbledon," Kamperman says. "It’s not realistic."

A new game, called QuickStart Tennis, puts kids on a shrunken version of a court with smaller rackets, low-compression tennis balls and a lower net. The object is to make it easier to hold the attention of 8- to 12-year-olds when so many of their friends are rushing off to less challenging team sports.

"They’re on the right track, knowing that they’re looking at that 8, 9, 10-year-old, where the emphasis before had been on finding that talented 16-year-old and trying to make a quick fix and turn him into a star," says Dan Gonzales, son of the late tennis great Pancho Gonzales. "What’s difficult for Americans to understand is that there are some things that need a process. Tennis demands it. It’s one of the most difficult games out there to play."

Gonzales was teaching at a leadership camp sponsored by the National Junior Tennis League. Forty kids from middle- and lower-class neighborhoods who won trips to Denver based on good grades and well-written essays got to play a week’s worth of tennis, do some volunteer work and meet some famous people, like former Broncos wide receiver Rod Smith.

The goal at the camp wasn’t so much to find the next Serena Williams, as to help a few dozen kids better appreciate the game and the sense of community it can evoke. There was also a subtle message at work, seen in the demographics of the kids chosen for this camp: A love of tennis doesn’t have to bloom out of an expensive country club.

Fourteen-year-old Toni McDonald learned the game by hitting a ball against a wall in Richmond, Va.

"My dad gave me a racket and a ball," she says. "I’d be hitting on the wall and if it went over the fence, I’d go chase it and come back. I only had one ball. From there, I just fell in love with tennis."

McDonald says her favorite player is Venus Williams "because no matter who she plays, she always plays hard." But she says it was her dad’s love of the game that drew her in more than any desire to be like Venus someday.

How much credit the biggest stars should receive for the overall health of their sports is debatable, especially among those in tennis.

Much the way Arnold Palmer brought golf to the masses and Tiger Woods expanded it, a lot of the credit for the ‘70s tennis boom went to eminently watchable players such as Evert, McEnroe and Connors, whose steel Wilson T2000 racket was among the hottest sellers.

So, not surprisingly, tennis’ backslide in America was widely blamed on the dearth of compelling stars in the 1990s. Pete Sampras was great but dull, Jim Courier came off as unapproachable, Jennifer Capriati was a train wreck and Lindsay Davenport, who seemed to do everything right, didn’t capture imaginations.

Not much has changed, though. Outside of the Williams sisters, America hasn’t produced a mass-market tennis star in more than a decade. That was Andre Agassi, who claimed, "Image is Everything" — a slogan critics said defined the me-first attitude of the ‘90s tennis star.

Industry leaders believe their improving numbers despite today’s dearth of top American pros punctures the myth that tennis has to have a big-selling TV personality to lead a comeback at the grass roots level.

"It’s a testament to the TIA’s efforts and the USTA understanding we can grow this sport without needing our version of Tiger Woods," says Tennis Industry Association president John Muir, who is also the general manager of Wilson Racquet Sports.

With help of the new kids’ programs, the ubiquitous USTA leagues and increasing numbers of public courts that make tennis available and affordable for adults, players are being reminded of the benefits of a sport that withered in the 1990s because of neglect, underfunded facilities and a piecemeal approach to youth development.

"I think a lot of people are getting bored with the, ‘I’m going to ride the recumbent bike while I read a magazine, or do the elliptical while I watch TV," Kamperman said. "I think people are rediscovering that tennis is one of those few sports where you can get a good workout and you don’t have to be bored. It works your mind and your body, and that’s a good thing."

-- Eddie Pells