Battling teens and returning stars are playing a generation game that is reinvigorating women's tennis, bringing a host of new fans and big bucks

By BRIGID O'HARA-FORSTER

he guardians of Wimbledon and its sacred traditions are sticklers for protocol. The Guide to the Championships says firmly: "Do Not bring babes in arms into any show court." That injunction is hardly observed: a cribful of racket-wielding babes has been unleashed not only onto the pristine turf of the All England Lawn Tennis Club but on tennis courts around the world. The advent of Martina Hingis, Venus and Serena Williams, and Anna Kournikova has combined with the return of champions Steffi Graf and Monica Seles to ignite women's tennis.

Their game, which once served as a metaphor for tedium, is enjoying a spectacular rise in popular appeal and financial clout. From 2.4 million spectators in 1986, attendance at the tournaments of the Corel Women's Tennis Association Tour has risen by 45%, passing the 3.5 million mark in 1997 for the first time. Added to that is a television audience worldwide estimated at 5.5 billion. Total prize money has grown from a puny $250,000 in 1971 to $40 million today--along with hefty endorsement fees earned by some of the top players. These figures have drawn not only the attention of sponsors and television programmers but also a seductive glance from the men's game. Although the men still command greater riches in prize money and sponsorships, they suffer from a perceived lack of personalities and a revolution in racket technology that can sometimes reduce the game to a stultifying exchange of booming serves.

The buzz drawing spectators and sponsors alike is fueled by a crop of young stars with dazzling games and dramatically different stories. Clearly at the top is Martina Hingis, the youngest ever to reach No. 1 ranking in the WTA. She achieved that summit at the age of 16 and a half years in March, 1997 and has already made record-setting a habit. Her first Grand Slam title in Australia also carried the "youngest of the modern era" tag.

Hingis has tennis in her genes. She was born in 1980, in what was then Czechoslovakia, to a mother, Melanie Molitor, who was ranked among her country's top 25 players and a father who was a tennis coach. After the marriage broke up, Molitor, who still coaches her daughter, took the seven-year-old to Switzerland to groom her for the top. In the house they are renting in Wimbledon, a lob away from Centre Court, Hingis seems a resolutely well-balanced and ebullient teenager who is having a ball while becoming seriously rich. In addition to the more than $6 million she has won in prize money, her agent claims that "In the U.S. Martina is one of the first foreign female athletes to form big sponsorships with U.S. companies." She spent her first few days in Britain filming commercials for Clairol and Ocean Spray and she loves doing it. "When I was little I always wanted to be a model," she says. But tennis claimed her first. As early as age four she was playing a tournament against girls twice her age, she says. "I've lived my life on the tennis court. I've never actually thought about [whether] I want to do it because it was always my life."

Hingis' game is based on an uncanny court sense and remarkable anticipation that enables her to read opponents' moves and place herself just where the ball is coming almost before it leaves the racket. That skill compensates for the less-than-dominant athleticism of a player who resembles more a sturdy pony than a predatory feline. She carves up the court with deft angles and precise placement. A serve that last year was more plop than pop can now get her out of trouble with its accuracy.

From America come two very different teen titans, Venus Williams and her sister Serena. Raised initially in Compton, Calif., they learned the game on public courts in one of the city's tougher neighborhoods under the guidance of their father, Richard, who remains their coach. With their beaded hair and athletic power games, the sisters don't hesitate to proclaim the inevitability of their rise to No. 1. At just over 1.8 m, the 18-year-old Venus is a spectacular sight with her extravagant Giacometti limbs reaching everywhere and a powerful serve pounding opponents. That serve set a world record last week when it was clocked at 201 km/h, comparable to many men.

Though her game is soaring, Venus is nevertheless keeping her feet on the ground. "Whether I am here playing tennis or not, tennis is going to go on with other people, so it's most important that I'm happy, that I'm enjoying myself whoever is playing," she says. After becoming the first unseeded woman to reach the final of the 1997 U.S. Open--where she lost to Hingis--Venus won her first two tournaments this year, rising to No. 6 in the world. Despite a disappointing first-round loss at her first Wimbledon last year, she is seeded No. 7 this year and moved through the early rounds with growing confidence.

Sister Serena, 16, whose muscular build can intimidate opponents as much as her tennis, is still playing a schedule limited by the WTA's age rules. But she is moving fast. After entering the world rankings last October at No. 453, she has now risen to No. 20, and some tennis watchers believe her game is good enough to take her beyond her big sister.

Richard Williams kept both his daughters away from the pressures of the competitive tour during their early years and still maintains control over their careers. Although Venus and Serena move through the Tour accompanied only by their mother Oracene, they remain quintessentially teenage. Sitting in the Wimbledon stands watching Serena play and exchanging lipsticks and checking out jewelry with friends, Venus dealt generously but remotely with her young fans until confronted with a postcard of herself. "Wow," she exclaimed. "That's so cute--my nails were done."

The young player with perhaps the most column inches to her credit--if not titles--is Russia's Anna Kournikova, a 17-year-old whose persona is smart cookie verging on tough broad. She was born in Moscow where she lived until being spotted at age 10 by an agent from International Management Group. She was whisked to Florida to join Nick Bollettieri's tennis academy, and it wasn't long before her athletic good looks worked like catnip on a glamour-hungry media. But the looks belie a rigorous work ethic that has produced a powerful all-court game and taken her to No. 11 after two victories over Hingis. A hand injury sustained in a victory over returning champion Steffi Graf kept her out of Wimbledon this year.

As much as these young players have captivated the public, their rapid entry to the forefront of the game worries some among the tennis world's aristocracy. "It is an unfortunate situation when a sport has to rely on a group of players in their middle teenage years to lead it," says Philip de Picciotto, president of Advantage International, the world's second-largest sports marketing firm, which represents Graf as well as athletes in 16 sports. "It's unfair to those very young players to be thrust into a broader role."

That could be changing with the return of some of the stars who paved the way for today's youngsters. When Steffi Graf joined the Tour in 1983, two-thirds of the top 100 players were Americans--now there are only 13 in the top 100, and 12 of the world's top 16 players are Europeans. In the early 1980s most of the tournaments were in the U.S. and the 13-year-old Graf had to spend much of her time away from Europe to compete. Today 27 of the WTA's 58 tournaments are played in Europe and 13 in the Asia/Pacific region. That internationalization of the sport and its consequent presence in major markets all over the world has been a significant factor in attracting sponsorships from the big multinational companies. They want that kind of global reach, which, with the game's virtually year-round schedule, gives them advertising flexibility few other sports can match. The tennis boom, argues De Picciotto, has come about through a combination of factors: "The historical accident of the fall of communism, the opening of new markets and the development of the Asian economies." And, of course, Graf who "brought the attention of a much wider public." As Graf chalked up her remarkable achievements--103 career titles, 22 Grand Slam titles including her 1988 sweep of all four events plus the Olympic Gold medal, career earnings of over $20 million--fans looked forward to a historic rivalry with another European teenager: Monica Seles.

Born in Yugoslavia, now a U.S. citizen, Seles was rocking Graf's pedestal as she amassed seven Grand Slam titles by age 19. But at a tournament in Hamburg in 1993, an unemployed German stabbed her in the back in a mad attempt to restore Graf to the No. 1 spot. Just after the attack, Seles' father was diagnosed with cancer and then her trauma was compounded by a German court's decision to let the attacker off with only a suspended two-year sentence.

Seles was out of the game completely for 26 months and her return was disrupted by her father's continuing illness. But just a few weeks after her father's death in early May this year she played again for the French Open title. Dressed in dark tennis clothes, Seles brought her old game back on court at last. Her power trip through the field before losing to Arantxa Sanchez Vicario in an emotional final enthralled the public. Eagerly approaching the challenge of the youth brigade, Seles says: "Each of them has a chance to become No. 1 or close to it, so I think that makes it very exciting."

Graf, too, received a rapturous reception at Wimbledon when the seven-time champion returned after a year's absence for surgery to rebuild her left knee. "I have nothing but appreciation and happiness when I think of the way the spectators have treated me," says Graf, who lost in the third round.

The lure of those players, and the financial forces at work in a sport already the most lucrative available to women and the only truly global one, has given great opportunities to Bartlett McGuire, the new CEO of the WTA. Taking over in January, he "saw a game very underdeveloped in terms of the money coming in to the game, particularly relative to other sports and relative to the men." Any hopes that the men's Tour might have for the women to join them in more major tournaments would be fulfilled, says McGuire, "only if we received assurances of equitable treatment for the women." At the moment only the U.S. Open offers the women equal prize money and McGuire is "very respectfully" pointing out to the Grand Slams that the case for equal rewards is buttressed by the game's growth and development.

Under McGuire, the WTA has entered into a partnership with Arnon Milchan's Regency Enterprises (Milchan is the producer of Pretty Woman and LA Confidential among other films) to televise women's tennis worldwide over a five-year period. That has already resulted in a deal with Eurosport, the European satellite sports channel, which has signed a three-year agreement to broadcast 80 to 100 women's tennis matches per year. As the Tour seeks a new sponsor to replace the Corel Corporation, McGuire is hopeful that the two deals will "enhance the attractiveness of the product to a potential sponsor."

Billie Jean King, one of the game's founding mothers, believes that "Women's tennis is having its best time in its 100-year history." An array of exciting matches is unfolding as the new personalities challenge the older generation, including Sanchez Vicario, Jana Novotna and the world No. 2 Lindsay Davenport. Still, De Picciotto points out that "A true champion sustains results over time." Players and public alike will be enthralled by the battle to decide just who among the new generation of stars will be that true champion.