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Final feeling - Page 3

© Michael Cecilio

The Final
We are all anticipating a great showdown in the final, but just exactly how do these two world-beaters compare with each other. Here is a small analysis on the match-up of 1st seed Martina Hingis and 2nd seed Lindsay Davenport.

[Using scale from 1 to 5]

EXPERIENCE
Martina: 5
Martina has experienced every single type of situation in the game of tennis, and she surely knows how to turn it up when the pressure is on. As she said in her earlier conference, if you don't lke pressure "you suck"! She has played in nine career Grand Slam finals, winning five, and is experienced enough to know what exactly she needs to do to win these big titles.
Lindsay: 4 1/2
Lindsay has been a touring pro since 1993 which is, believe it or not, only less than two years before Martina turned pro. While Lindsay has won just as many singles titles in her career as Martina and has faced a lot of pressure situations over time, she has not reached as many major finals as Martina has, competing in just her third at the Australian Open. The two times that she won the finals, she had won the encounters in straight sets. If Lindsay is perhaps taken to three sets, or is down by a considerable margin in the match, she may not have been in such a major situation before to know how to cope with the pressure.

MENTAL TOUGHNESS
Martina: 4
Martina is mentally tough, and we witnessed that when she won the 1997 Australian Open for her first Grand Slam victory. Back then, she looked calm, composed and focussed. Needless to say, she still is. However, we did witness the meltdown at the French Open and Wimbledon, which showed the world that maybe she is a little more vulnerable than she will have us believe. To the credit of her mental toughness, she rebounded well and drew a strengthening experience from those experiences.
Lindsay: 4
Lindsay was always regarded as too nice to win a Grand Slam. She still is a very congenial, easygoing person, but she now has a killer instinct. Lindsay's hunger to win is enormous. With the help of her coach Robert van't Hof, Lindsay now believes that she can compete with the best for the biggest titles. What Robert does not want to see is Lindsay reverting back to the days when she got down on herself in matches, and in fact, she did seem to revert back to her old ways in the warm-up tournament in Sydney. Nevertheless, she is a fighter and a believer and those are perhaps the two biggest assets one could have on the tennis court.

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