TENNIS ALL-AMERICAN CHAMPIONSHIPS : Experience Helps Birch Win All-Stanford Final

Top-seeded Sandra Birch has been through this before. For the second year in a row, she was in an all-Stanford singles final in the Riviera All-American Tennis Championships.

The difference was this time she won, defeating wild-card entry Meredith McGrath, 6-1, 6-3, Sunday at the Riviera Country Club.

Birch, the defending National Collegiate Athletic Assn. singles champion, lost to teammate Tami Whitlinger in two sets last year. That made a difference this year.

“I felt comfortable here because I’ve been there before, but it’s more pressure because I’m expected to win,” Birch said.

Birch, a junior, had little difficulty with her teammate in the first set and used the combination of her lob and the sun to great effect.

“She threw a couple of them (lobs) at me and I couldn’t see them, so I figured she couldn’t either,” Birch said.

But McGrath, who has an injured knee, regained control of her game early in the second set, but Birch got a service break to go up, 4-2, and closed it out, 6-3.

McGrath, a freshman who advanced to the U.S. Open mixed doubles final this year with partner Rick Leach, said that she had difficulty with her serve in the first set. The combination of the injury, which kept her from practicing earlier in the week, and the grueling nature of the tournament may have taken a toll on McGrath.

“The only way I’m going to beat her is to come in to the net, but I didn’t execute very well at all today,” McGrath said.

Neither player felt that playing a teammate affected her game.

“Nobody likes to play a teammate and it’s a difficult thing to do, but you can go out there and block out who you’re playing and just play the ball,” Birch said.

McGrath agreed.

“I didn’t think twice about it. We were going to go on the courts and play our hardest, no matter who we played,” she said.

McGrath returned to the court in the final doubles match, in which she and Teri Whitlinger defeated Shannan McCarthy and Stacey Schefflin of Georgia, 6-1, 6-0.

The consolation singles was an all-USC matchup, with Trisha Laux defeating Anya Kochoff, 6-1, 6-2.

Birch played in the consolation doubles match with teammate Debbie Graham, coming back from a 5-1 deficit in the third set to win, 6-4, 2-6, 7-5, over Jessica Emmons and Kimberly Po of UCLA.