Article by Gerhard Grundhammer

CHNADA RUBIN PREVIEW

26 year old Chanda Rubin, defeated Serena Williams yesterday in a dramatic match to gain the honour to play the hottest, sexyest, and most talented player of the WTA-tour today at 5pm local time in Los Angeles. That is 8pm in New York, sunday 1am in London and sunday 2am in Belgrade.

Chanda became a professional tennisplayer at the age of 15 and had her most successful moments when she was about 20 years. That was the time as she reached the semifinal of the Australian open (1996-her best result at Grand Slams, ever), won her first WTA title in Linz/Austria (1997) and improved to the no6 of the world.

Nowdays, a few years later, she is one of the most expirienced players on the tour. She always managed to have a couple of good results to stay in the top 50, but never settled down at the top 10. So she won the tournaments of Hobart in 99, Quebec in 2000 and Eastbourne earlier this year.

2002 started as bad as it can start for the girl from Louisiana / USA. She could not play at all until April following a left knee surgery. But what a comeback she had. First she played two rather poor tournaments at Rome and Berlin, but then she reached the final of Madrid (lost to Seles), the fourth round of Roland Garros (lost to V.Williams) and the fourth round of Wimbledon (lost to S.Williams). In between of those two Grand Slams she won the Eastbourne tourny, remember? After that great run she played at San Diego where she only lost to Davenport at round 3 in three sets, and now she reached the semis of L.A. beating the worlds no1 Serena Williams for the first time in her career. She is already the no21 of the world now (US #7), but the points of Los Angeles will surely bring her further up.

In the race to the Championships (only results of 2002 are counted) her amazing run lead her to position 20. Thats way ahead of players like Shaughnessy, Kournikova, Maleeva, Sugiyama, Pierce, Rittner or Majoli. Big names in tennis who have played all year, and Chanda has only been playing for three months now!

Though the right-handed player is only 1.68 meters she likes to attack from the very beginning of the match. Her serve is not that fast, but she uses a lot of spin with it, and forces her opponents to return from outside the court, so she has an open court for her next shot. But fortunately Jelena is one of best returners of the world, so it will be an interesting match.

Both players met only once in their career. That was at Zurich last year, as Jelena had HER brilliant run with 5 finals in 2 months, and Jelena won 6-4 and 6-4.

One last interesting fact: Though Chanda Rubin is a player who uses a lot of spin, and Jelena Dokic is one of the power-hitters, both players use the same racquet: The Head Intelligence i.S6