Tennis: Rios has a war of words raging off court

MELBOURNE - Marcelo Rios has refused to back down on his claims that women's tennis is a joke, despite coming under fresh attack from some of the top women players.

World No 1 Jennifer Capriati joined Venus Williams and Martina Hingis in attacking Rios, saying his comments were ridiculous and unworthy of a reply.

"I think we all know what the truth is," Capriati said. "That's just a ridiculous comment and I don't know what he meant by it."

Rios had already come under fire from Williams, who said the top men played well only in the Grand Slams, as well as from Hingis, who challenged him to a match.

The outspoken Chilean laughed off Hingis' challenge, cracking a joke about the last battle of the sexes, between Karsten Braasch and the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, during the 1998 Australian Open.

He said the "cocky" Americans were in the ATP Office boasting that they could beat a male player ranked 200 in the world when Braasch, ranked 203 at the time, walked in and took them up on their offer.

A heavy smoker in the twilight of his career, Braasch had been out all morning playing golf, but hardly raised a sweat as he beat Serena 6-1, then Venus 6-2 immediately after.

Venus Williams, who once agreed to a practice session with Russian Yevgeny Kafelnikov after he criticised the women's game, said the only difference between the top men and women was that women played their best every time they went on the court.

"We don't slack at any time and we don't just bring our best game to the Grand Slams, we bring it to every event," she said. "We take extreme pride in what we do, no matter whether it's the Australian Open or if we're playing in Indonesia - and I think that is where we really excel."

Hingis, who regularly beats players bigger than her through her court acumen, argued that women's tennis was better to watch than men's because there were no free points.

"In men's tennis, because they have such big serves, they concentrate on that more, but in our tennis it's a little different," she said.

"I think the depth in women's tennis has also gotten much better. You can see right now there are so many girls who can play and you can always have a hard time. If you don't take it seriously, they can always beat you."

Responding to the latest criticism, Rios said his complaints about women's tennis were not directed at the top players but rather the depth in the game.

He said that while the top men might struggle for hours to beat a player ranked well below them, it was different situation in women's tennis.

Rios said a classic example of this was when Hingis beat 15th seed Amanda Coetzer 6-1, 6-0 in just 44 minutes to reach the quarter-finals.

Rios, a former world No 1, said the issue had been talked about in the locker-room and all the men shared the same opinion.

"It is ridiculous what's going on in women's tennis and everybody agrees, but I'm not going to start arguing with every girl that says it's not true.

"I'm not saying that the girls are better or that guys are better than girls. I just said girls win too easy."

He found at least one ally in Austrian Stefan Koubek, who reached his first Grand Slam quarter-final with a hard-fought 7-5, 6-1, 6-7, 6-2 win over Chilean qualifier Fernando Gonzalez.

While Hingis dropped only 10 games on her way to the quarter-finals, Koubek has been involved in some marathon battles, twice fighting back from two sets down to win.

"If you look at the draw, I mean there's the men's fighting two, three hours for every match, and there's the women playing 40 minutes," Koubek said.

"That says everything, and I think Rios was not that wrong."

* Venus Williams crunched down a serve timed at a sizzling 197 km/h during her 6-0, 6-3 destruction of 13th seed Magdalena Maleeva to stretch her lead at the top of women's speed-servers list.

She is well clear of second-placed Uzbek Iroda Tulyaganova's 182 km/h effort, and her powerful delivery would also see her on to the men's list.

She is far from Greg Rusedski's scorching 222 km/h effort, but ahead of Tim Henman's best of 193 km/h and world No 1 Lleyton Hewitt's best of 190 km/h.

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