19.09.01 : Five-time champion Monica Seles became the latest player to withdraw from the Princess Cup on Tuesday in the wake of last week's terrorist attacks on the United States.
Seles joined her countrywomen, two-time champion Serena Williams and world No. 2 Jennifer Capriati, in pulling out of this $565,000 tennis event.

According to tournament organizers, Seles, who won the Brasil Open on Saturday, was to arrive in Tokyo from London but chose not to travel late Monday.

15.09.01 : Defending champion Serena Williams and world number two Jennifer Capriati have pulled out of next week's Toyota Princess Cup tournament following Tuesday's terror attacks on New York and Washington, organisers said on Saturday.
While Williams and Capriati have asked the WTA tour for permission to skip the September 17-23 event, compatriot Monica Seles will make the trip as scheduled, according to organisers.
French Open finalist Kim Clijsters of Belgium will also be in the field for the $565,000 hardcourt tournament.

15.09.01 : Monica Seles maintained her perfect record against Jelena Dokic.
Seles won her first title since returning from injury when she defeated Dokic on Saturday, 6-3, 6-3, in the women's final of the $1.03 million Brasil Open hardcourt tennis tournament.
Seles and Dokic, the top two seeds, have met four times, all resulting in victories for Seles. Their previous encounter came in the round of 16 at the Rogers AT&T Cup at Toronto in August, when the American posted a 6-3, 7-6 (7-3) win.
After being sidelined for five months due to an injured right foot, Seles returned in July to reach two finals and a pair of semifinals before falling to Czech teenager Daja Bedanova in the fourth round of last week's U.S. Open.
Seles, 27, won her second WTA title of the year and the 49th of her illustrious career. The former world No. 1's last title came in February, when she captured the IGA U.S. Indoors at Oklahoma City.

Top seed Monica Seles swept aside Jelena Dokic of Yugoslavia 6-3 6-3 to win the $625.000 Brazil Open on Saturday.
The American was aggressive throughout the encounter and a break in each set was enough for Seles to clinch her second title of the year.
Dokic saved one match point at 5-3 but Seles wrapped up the match on her second attempt. "It was a very close match despite the scores. Both sets were fought very hard. Jelena was playing aggressively and not missing many balls," said Seles, who also won the U.S. Indoor Championships in Oklahoma in February.
"She was going for the lines. I tried to raise the level of my game and to play better tennis.
"I am very happy to have won my second title this year and I look forward to coming back."
Second seed Dokic, the winner of the Italian Open in May, admitted she had not been at her best.
"I am a bit disappointed by the way I played today especially since I had only lost 10 games on my way to the final," Dokic, 18, said.
"Monica served very well and I was unable to dictate the points since I was not serving well.
"My goal was to reach the final and I did it although it would have been nice to win the tournament."

14.09.01 : Top seeds Monica Seles and Jelena Dokic will battle in Saturday's final at the inaugural Brasil Open.

The top-seeded Seles was tested in her semifinal match against fifth-seeded Slovakian Henrieta Nagyova -- as the American settled for a 7-5, 5-7, 6-3 decision. The second-seeded Dokic, however, advanced with ease in a 6-0, 6-2 drubbing of Paraguay's Rossana de los Rios at the beautiful Costa do Sauipe Tennis Center.

The 27-year-old Seles and 18-year-old Dokic, of Yugoslavia, recently squared off at the WTA event in Toronto -- where Seles prevailed in straight sets in a third-round matchup.

Seles, the owner of 48 career singles titles, is 1-3 in her 2001 finals. Dokic has appeared in only one final in her brief career, and she titled in Rome earlier this season.

13.09.01 : Top-seeded Monica Seles advanced to the quarterfinals of the Brazil Open on Wednesday, recovering from mid-match fatigue to beat Slovakia's Janette Husarova 6-3, 1-6, 6-0.
``It was difficult out there,'' said Seles, who complained of the heat at the Sauipe complex on Brazil's tropical northeastern coast.
Organizers gave the duo a 10-minute rest period before starting the third set in 86-degree heat.
Seles will face Russia's Tatiana Panova in the quarterfinals. Panova beat Brazil's Joana Cortez 6-1, 6-3.

02.09.01 : Unseeded Czech teenager Daja Bedanova ousted two-time champion Monica Seles Sunday at the U.S. Open.
The 18-year-old Bedanova stunned the seventh-seeded Seles in three sets, 7-5, 4-6, 6-3, in 1 hour, 52 minutes in a fourth-round battle at Armstrong Stadium on the grounds of the USTA National Tennis Center.
Bedanova advanced to the quarters when Seles drilled her two-handed backhand into the net on the Czech's second match point of the day.
Seles committed 51 unforced errors and had her serve broken on three occasions in the setback. This marks Seles' worst U.S. Open outing since bowing out in the third round as a 16-year old in 1990. She succumbed in the quarters from 1997-2000.
The upstart Bedanova will meet the Martina Hingis-Jelena Dokic winner in the quarterfinals.
The veteran Seles won the U.S. Open in 1991 and '92 and lost in the 1995 and '96 finals.

01.09.01 : No crying in baseball? It's the gospel truth. No parking on the dance floor? We can live with that. No grunting in tennis? UNNNHHH! I don't think so.
Monica Seles' grunt is as indelible a battle cry as Godzilla's high-pitched wail. Like the mighty monster, Seles emits it as a prelude to attack. Oftentimes, her opponents do not take kindly to the Seles grunt.
"She's screaming at the top of her lungs," complained Jennifer Capriati during the Acura Classic earlier this month in Carlsbad, Calif. Seles won that match, 6-3, 6-3, and then beat Martina Hingis in the semifinals before succumbing to Venus Williams in the final. It's funny, though, how Seles' diaphragm reflexes become so much more noisome as her level of play improves.
Monica Seles is 27 and something of an afterthought -- more a burp than a grunt -- in this year's US Open. She is not a Williams sister or a top seed like Hingis. She is not a returned-to-the-fold Capriati, whose Jenaissance has been well-documented -- and deservedly so. She is not a Belgian belle, a la Kim Clijsters or Justine Henin, the 5th- and 6th-seeds, respectively.
But as she proved once again this morning with a decisive 6-2, 6-3 victory against Eleni Daniilidou, she is capable of winning this tournament. Seles is the only female two-time Open champion entered into this draw. Last year Seles had the 4th-best singles record (58-13) on the Sanex WTA Tour, behind only Lindsay Davenport, Martina Hingis and Venus Williams. If you consider that those three combined to serve Seles 11 of her 13 losses and Pierce, the 2000 French Open champion, added another, then you can say that, with one exception, her only losses last year came to Grand Slam winners of 2000 and Hingis, the No. 1 player in the world.
Seles, however, has had a remarkably quiet year for someone who began 2001 with the best active career record (441-78, .821) in women's tennis. She suffered a stress-fracture in her right foot which rendered her inactive from mid-March through mid-July, including the French Open and Wimbledon. The four-time Australian Open winner lost to eventual champ Capriati in the quarterfinals.
Since returning from her foot injury, Seles has acquitted herself quite well in preparing for the year's final Grand Slam. In four different hard court events this summer, she has twice beaten Capriati and Hingis and twice advanced to the final, losing to Davenport and Venus Williams. That she is still losing to the Sanex WTA Tour's biggest hitters is not lost on Seles. This year she has hired a full-time trainer, Lisa Reed, with the goal of making those grunts even more imposing.

"Definitely, physically everybody is a lot stronger," Seles said today after winning her third-round match. "Everybody's goal is to get really strong, which beforehand we had a few players, but the other players didn't even want to get strong because they felt, `We don't want to go down that road.' Now everybody wants to go down that road.
"The ball is just being hit a lot harder," she said. "I think kids growing up seeing Martina (Navratilova), Steffi (Graf) and myself realized, We got to hit it harder."
Now Seles realizes that if she is to remain among the elite, she must grunt in the weight room, too. Not that she has to enjoy it. "I'm not that crazy on doing weights," said Seles. "If you would give me a choice between playing tennis even three hours or going to the weight room for an hour, I would pick tennis. But that's just because I love the game."