No easy road for newcomers

PARIS, May 24: Exciting teenage newcomers Anna Kournikova and Venus Williams, who were hoping to join World No 1 Martina Hingis in dethroni...

PARIS, May 24: Exciting teenage newcomers Anna Kournikova and Venus Williams, who were hoping to join World No 1 Martina Hingis in dethroning the `old guard’ at this year’s French Open, were done no favours at the tournament draw yesterday.

Kournikova, the brash 15-year-old Russian who was junior world champion in 1995 and who has learned her tennis at Nick Bollettieri’s tennis academy in Florida, came out of the hat as the potential third-round opponent of the top-seeded Hingis.

And Williams, the 16-year-old great American hope, was drawn to play Japan’s experienced Naoko Sawamatsu

in the first-round.

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Williams, the 6ft (1m 80) player from California, and another of the new contingent of stars likely to dominate the women’s game in the year 2000, will be making her Roland Garros debut.

Although she has a lot of raw talent and will undoubtedly attract a lot of admirers for her aggressive style of play, she will need to pull out all stops if she is to topple the 24-year-old Sawamatsu.

Sawamatsu, who reached the fourth round in 1992, will be playing in Paris for the eighth consecutive year. From the third-round she can expect three-times champion Monica Seles to be waiting for her.

Martina Hingis goes into the Open with no clay court matchplay behind her after being forced to take several weeks off after damaging a knee following thrown off a friend’s horse last month. The 16-year-old Swiss player opens her campaign in the 100th women’s tournament against Henrieta Nagyova of Slovakia.

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Steffi Graf, whose comeback after a long injury absence ended in humiliation in the Berlin quarters last week when she lost badly against South African Amanda Coetzer, plays 84th-ranked Paola Suarez of Argentina in her first-round match.

The former World No 1 would then face either last year’s world junior champion Amelie Mauresmo of France or Jolene Watanabe of the United States. Her scheduled quarter-final opponent should be seventh-seeded Conchita Martinez — the 25-year-old Spaniard, who won Wimbledon in 1994.

Martinez plays French wild-card entry Emilie Lott in the first-round before facing either Chanda Rubin of the United States or Mariana Diaz-Oliva of Argentina in the second.

Jana Novotna of the Czech Republic and Lindsay Davenport of the United States are the other seeded quarter-final players in Graf’s half of the draw.Things look more complicated for Monica Seles. After opening against Japan’s Miho Saeki and playing the probable third-round match against either Williams or Sawamatsu, the American left-hander could find France’s big-hitting Mary Pierce blocking her way.

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Pierce, the 1995 Australian Open champ and a finalist at Roland Garros in 1994, has been showing excellent form recently, triumphing in Rome and reached the final in Berlin. In the first-round the tenth-seed plays Tatiana Panova of Russia and, providing she makes no mistakes, should then play either Patrica Hy-Boulais or Nathalie Dechy.