WITH STEFFI GRAF at least temporarily out of the way through injury and Martina Hingis rumoured to be rusty for the same reason, this year's Wimbledon must have looked very inviting a couple of weeks ago for two of the tournament's regulars.
Jana Novotna and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario have both gone very close to winning this coveted title over the past few years only to be deprived of victory by the German. The news that Hingis had fallen off her horse must surely have improved their mood even further.
Things haven't altogether turned out that way, though. Although one of them will go forward to Saturday's singles final hoping to capitalise on a youngster's lack of experience on grass, neither will need telling that the future of this tournament is in the other half of the draw where, even if they do miss out over the next few days, Hingis and Anna Kournikova today look set to commence one of Wimbledon's great rivalries.
Kournikova, of course, has been the revelation of these championships so far and her latest victory a 7-6, 6-4 defeat of French Open champion Iva Majoli, was her most commanding so far.
The 16 year-old Russian, who less than a month ago opted to play in the junior event at Eastbourne, did well enough to pose a serious threat to the record set by Hingis at the Australian Open where she became the youngest player ever to win a Grand Slam singles title.
First, of course, she must beat Hingis. And that will be no easy task. When the pair met at the French Open, it was the world number one who came away a straight-sets winner. Hingis concedes, however, that things have changed over these past few days.
She has improved with ever> game, she loves the surface and she has nothing to lose so this will be very difficult for me," she said.
The world number one certainly lived up to her billing of tournament favourite yesterday, scoring the most convincing victory of the round by beating Denisa Chladkova 6-3, 6-2 in a match that lasted fractionally short of an hour. Only twice during that time, at 5-3 up in the opening set and early in the second, did the Swiss woman look remotely vulnerable.
On the other side of the draw Sanchez Vicario had, prior to the quarter finals, looked to be the player who was making the running. The Spaniard strolled through her first four matches and, after a desperately poor season, appeared to have found her best form at precisely the right time.
Against Nathalie Tauziat, however, the cracks began to appear in her game and had the 29-year-old Frenchwoman held her nerve to take their match into a third set, there appeared to be a genuine prospect of an upset.
Instead Tauziat failed to capitalise on the Spaniard's poor service through the second set, breaking twice all right, but, crucially, being broken three times, allowing last year's beaten finalist to progress to the closest thing to a grudge match that Wimbledon '97 seems likely to produce.
Things have not been good between Sanchez Vicario and Novotna since they stopped playing doubles together and neither player made much attempt to hide their feelings yesterday.
The Czech, who beat Yayuk Basuki 6-3, 6-3 yesterday, pointed to Sanchez Vicario's weakness on the forehand, and began to write off her record in the championships so far. "I don't think she's had a real contest yet, so it's hard to tell how she is playing."
When asked about the simmering bitterness between the pair, Sanchez Vicario announced that she was unaware of what was at the core of her former partner's attitude to her. However, she did add: "She is disrespectful to everybody, perhaps it is jealousy, but when she has won a Grand Slam title (the Spaniard leads on this score by three to nil) let her sit back and talk about it."
