Williams Defeats Hingis for Title

Venus Williams showed she can win on her own.

Playing for the first time in a tournament without a family member with her, she routed top-ranked Martina Hingis, 6-3, 6-4, Sunday to win the Swisscom Challenge at Zurich.

Williams did not drop a set in the tournament and earned her ninth title. She also denied Hingis the chance to win a title in her home country for the first time.

“My parents had confidence in me and I’m glad I didn’t disappoint them,” said Williams, whose family remained in Florida. “I was a little nervous being without them at the start of the tournament.

“Naturally, as everybody gets older you have to start doing things on your own. That’s what I did here, so I really deserved this title.”

Williams scored her second consecutive victory over top-seeded Hingis. Two weeks ago, she defeated her in the Grand Slam Cup semifinals. Hingis still has an 8-5 advantage in the series between the 19-year-old stars, but Williams leads, 3-2, this season.

“I had my chances, especially in the second set, but I was simply unable to close out the points,” said Hingis, who last week won her seventh title this season in Filderstadt, Germany.

“I can’t say I’m really disappointed because she was playing better than me, but with some more physical training I can beat her again.”

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After losing the first two sets, Greg Rusedski came back to defeat Nicolas Kiefer at Vienna in the final of the CA Trophy.

The fifth-seeded Rusedski defeated seventh-seeded Kiefer, 6-7 (7-5), 2-6, 6-3, 7-5, 6-4, in a match that lasted 3 1/2 hours. After winning the first two sets, Kiefer began to tire in the third, repeatedly failing to get his first serve in play. Rusedski broke Kiefer once in each of the final three sets.

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Marcelo Rios defended his Heineken Open title with a 6-2, 7-6 (7-5) victory over Sweden’s Mikael Tillstrom in Singapore.

Tillstrom, who played 10 matches during the week, including qualifying and doubles competition, appeared worn out against Rios.

Miscellany

St. Mary’s College of Maryland hired Alfred Johnson, who has spent nine years as an assistant at various colleges, as interim men’s basketball coach to replace Othell Wilson, the school announced. Wilson was placed on leave after his arrest on rape charges.

Johnson spent the past two seasons as an assistant coach at Tuskegee University. Wilson, promoted to head coach in August, was accused last month of abducting a 22-year-old woman and raping her at his apartment.

Eight months after announcing her comeback plans, skater Tonya Harding will compete for the first time since the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics when she makes her professional debut tonight at Huntington, W.Va., in the Pro Skating Championships.

Implicated in the 1994 attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan, Harding, the only U.S. woman to land a triple axel in competition, is banned for life from competing in amateur events. But the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. has no jurisdiction over professional events.

Japan’s Masato Yonehara sprinted to the finish line and defeated defending champion Nikos Pollias by three seconds in the Athens Marathon in Greece.

Yonehara, 32, finished in 2 hours 18 minutes 35 seconds.

Okuno Tamaki of Japan won the women’s race in 2:46:46, defeating Greece’s Georgia Abatzidou by more than six minutes.

South Korea’s Choi Yo-sam won the WBC light-flyweight title with a unanimous decision over Thailand’s Saman Sor Jaturong in a 12-round bout at Seoul.

Choi (21-1) entered the match as the WBC’s No. 1 challenger. Jaturong’s record fell to 41-3.