Tennis : Austin May Play Singles at Indian Wells

It looks as though Tracy Austin may play tournament singles for the first time in six years by playing in the $250,000 Virginia Slims of Indian Wells.

Austin, 26, who hasn’t competed in tournament singles since chronic back problems forced her into retirement in 1983, may accept one of the two wild cards held by International Management Group, the event’s promoter, to fill out the 32-player singles draw.

Indications are that the decision about her playing the March 6-12 event at Hyatt Grand Champions, is up to Advantage International’s Jeff Austin, who is his sister’s agent.

Dee Dee Felich, tournament manager at Grand Champions, is optimistic that Austin, from Rolling Hills, will play singles in the Virginia Slims event.

“I’d hope she would want to come out and play because it’s a neighbor tournament,” Felich said.

However, Tony Diaz of IMG said: “Nothing is confirmed at this point.”

A two-time U. S. Open champion and the youngest player to win the Open at 16 years 9 months in 1979, Austin dropped off the tour in 1983 at the age of 20, largely because of an inflamed sciatic nerve that caused her a great deal of pain.

Austin began playing doubles last August and has since played with partners in five tournaments. But Austin has played singles only once and that was in an exhibition last week at The Palace in Auburn Hills, Mich.

What looks to be a short-term burnout case, Pam Shriver, pulled out of the Virginia Slims of Washington last week saying she was too exhausted to play singles.

Shriver, No. 5 player in the world, said she may decrease her schedule to 10 or 12 events a year to help reach her goal of winning a Grand Slam tournament, which she has never done.

“I’m of no value if I come in and play singles and lose in the first round,” she said. “So I’m just going to regroup.”

Shriver said she scared herself a week before when she had what she called a “physical and emotional collapse.” That was when Shriver decided she needed to make a change in her schedule.

“I had to take a step back and get off that whirlwind cycle,” she said. “I was under a lot of stress I didn’t really realize. I was slowly killing myself.”

Shriver, who has entered the singles draw at Indian Wells, fired Bud Schultz, her coach of two months, after the Australian Open.

With six of the top 10 players in the world committed to play, the field for next month’s Newsweek Champions Cup looks something like a Grand Slam event. Fifteen of the top 20 in the rankings and 30 of the top 40 are supposed to be in the 56-player draw.

Committed to play are Andre Agassi (No. 3), Stefan Edberg (4), Boris Becker (5), Jimmy Connors (7), Miloslav Mecir (8) and Jakob Hlasek (10). Tim Mayotte, Yannick Noah, Thomas Muster and Aaron Krickstein, all ranked in the top 15, are also committed to play in the $702,500 tournament March 13-19 at Hyatt Grand Champions.

It’s the strongest field the 16-year tournament has had, said Charlie Pasarell, the tournament director.

In 1990, the Newsweek tournament becomes one of 11 top Championship Series events. The Volvo/Los Angeles tournament, which is lowered to an Open Series event in 1990 and drops well below Newsweek in stature, has also received its player designations.

It’s still eight months away, but the Volvo/Los Angeles event’s player designations include Mats Wilander, Agassi, Mayotte and Pat Cash. Others in the designated group for the Sept. 18-24 event at UCLA are Michael Chang, Brad Gilbert, Kevin Curren and Mark Woodforde, who are also committed to Newsweek.

But if everyone actually shows up at the Los Angeles Tennis Center at UCLA, that’s another thing. Last year, designated players Ivan Lendl, Cash and Krickstein pulled out. Neither John McEnroe nor defending champion Mikael Pernfors have been designated to play under the Grand Prix rules, but they could still play as entries, possibly wild cards, depending on their interest.

McEnroe’s current commitments included the Stella Artois Indoors last week in Milan, Italy, and he is scheduled to play another Grand Prix event at Lyon, France, this week, then the Buick WCT Finals at Dallas Feb. 27-March 5.

On another matter, the Southern California Tennis Assn., which runs the Volvo/Los Angeles tournament, has not yet decided whether to pay appearance fees to attract players to its event in 1990, which is the first year such payments are supposed to be allowed. As an open week tournament on the ATP tour, no players are designated to play.

In an article last week in a Stockholm newspaper, Bjorn Borg said reports that he had swallowed sleeping pills to try to commit suicide were ridiculous.

What really happened, Borg said, was that he got sick after eating fish that had been frozen. Borg said he was nauseated and took “a few” sleeping tablets to fall asleep.

What was born in Tokyo, moved to Paris, Barcelona, Boston, Melbourne, Stockholm and Houston and is dying in New York?

It’s tennis’ year-ending Masters tournament, which appeared for the first time 19 years ago in Tokyo and will be played the last time this November at New York.

The Masters has been strictly a New York event since 1977, but whatever this tournament is called in the 1990 Assn. of Tennis Professionals Tour, it isn’t going to be there again. At least for a while.

Either Stuttgart, West Germany, or Antwerp, Belgium are the best bets as sites for the Masters, which doesn’t have a name but is being referred to as the ATP Finals.

There will be the normal tennis politics going on here. If Stuttgart gets the tournament, then Ion Tiriac may be forced to give up the Grand Prix tournament he promotes in the same city. Whatever happens, plans are for the ATP Finals to be bouncing around Europe for a few years with no permanent site. It may eventually wind up at the new ATP headquarters at the Sawgrass resort in Ponte Vedra, Fla., next door to the Professional Golf Assn.

Tennis fans in La Jolla will soon be seeing doubles. The Pacific Coast men’s doubles championships will be played March 3-5 at La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club. It will be the 100th anniversary of the event.

Doubles teams from UCLA, Stanford, USC, UC Irvine and Pepperdine are among the teams expected to compete. Brian Garrow of UCLA, Jeff Tarango of Stanford, Greg Failla and Eric Amend of USC and Jose Noriega of USD are featured performers.

Tennis Notes

Nicole London, 13, of Rolling Hills Estates, won the girls’ singles title at Les Petits As, an international junior tournament at Tardes, France. London defeated Zdena Malkova of Czechoslovakia in the final. Tommy Shimada of Gulph Mills, Pa., won the boys’ singles title and teamed with Jimmy Jackson of Hendersonville, N. C., to win the doubles. The U. S. team, coached by USTA national Coach Nick Saviano, is the first USTA-sponsored group to compete in the tournament and is part of the USTA’s $7 million player development program. . . . Mats Wilander, who didn’t play the first round of the Davis Cup for Sweden, pulled out of his other February commitment, the Volvo/U.S. Indoors at Memphis, Tenn. last week. . . . Stefan Edberg is suing Advantage International, his marketing agent, charging mismanagement of funds and breach of contract, according to Sports inc magazine. Edberg is expected to switch to ProServ. . . . Hamilton Jordan, chief executive officer of the Assn. of Tennis Professionals, took issue with John McEnroe’s criticism of the 1990 ATP tour. McEnroe said at the Australian Open that he and other top players were not consulted in the final stages of the project. “That is simply not correct,” Jordan said in the newest issue of the International Tennis Weekly, which is the official ATP publication. “The top players and all the players have been consulted along the way. I personally met with the top players over the summer. John McEnroe was the first top player that I sat down and talked with.” . . . Myron McNamara, who has been with the Riviera Tennis Club and is a former coach at UC Irvine, has joined the Balboa Bay Club Racquet Club as director of its junior program. . . . The Los Angeles Strings are one of eight teams in the fifth season of Domino’s Pizza TeamTennis, July 11-Aug. 12.