Women’s sporting events have never been popular in Chicago, and they are now in more trouble than ever. Certainly at the Olympic level the competition between female athletes is as fierce and involving as it is between male athletes, but the Olympics are not likely to come to Chicago anytime soon. There are no ski slopes here, so the speed and daring of women skiers are but a televised rumor. The city has never been able to work up much interest in track and field. And as for high-profile women’s events like figure skating, well, they’ve never made much impact on Chicago.
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What exactly was the Ameritech Cup, a boat race? And who was going to be stupid enough to pay money to see a boat race in the middle of winter, even if it was held indoors? Of course, it was actually a women’s tennis tournament, and a pretty good one too, as it turned out. Yet the Pavilion, cut down to size with a blue curtain, was sparsely populated even for the finals. The upper deck was all but vacant. Too bad, because the tournament was won by a scrappy little giant killer who should become a Chicago favorite, perhaps because she favors Chicago. Magdalena Maleeva, who last year eliminated Martina Navratilova, a Chicago fave, before bowing out with leg injuries, this year eliminated the popular sports beauty Gabriela Sabatini. With a reputation for knocking out marquee players, Maleeva may not be invited back. Truth be told, she wasn’t supposed to be back this year, and turned up at the last minute because another name player, Mary Joe Fernandez, dropped out with the flu. Even so, Maleeva established herself not only as a top competitor, but as a driven and likable player. We went to see Sabatini in the semifinals and soon found ourselves rooting for Maleeva; in the end nothing could have pleased us more than her convincing triumph in the finals, even against a promising young U.S. player.
The cliche conflict in women’s sports is between the popular beauty and the woman who can really play, and it was almost comic how stereotypically last Saturday’s first semifinal followed those lines. It matched the second-seeded Sabatini against the third-seeded Maleeva, and there was much to separate them aside from their rankings. Sabatini, renowned throughout the sports world as a model athlete, pun purely intended, was also, it appeared, a natural athlete. She had that confident, slow-moving grace of someone who has always found sports almost too easy. Maleeva, by contrast, was comparatively short and squat, and clearly a battler. The youngest of the three tennis-playing Maleeva sisters from Bulgaria, she had the pouty combativeness common to many babies of the family. Sabatini was broad-shouldered and erect, Maleeva slope-shouldered and defensive. When they took the court it was like watching a battle between the sisters played by Geena Davis and Lori Petty in A League of Their Own.
From there, her interest seemed to fade out and in. She lost the next game with a lazy little half volley Maleeva pounced on. Yet she then came out smoking and held serve with confidence. She and Maleeva battled back and forth until Sabatini broke to go ahead 5-4, and with the crowd cheering her on she held serve to take the second set 6-4.
For Garrison Jackson, 32, making what she believed would be her last visit to Chicago, it must have seemed she was playing a younger version of herself. Both players had strong serves, only Raymond’s was a little faster and a little better. Both could cover the court, only Raymond could do it a little quicker. And Raymond had something Garrison Jackson has never had, a flickering one-handed backhand that she could either cut or hit with topspin without telegraphing it. Raymond, 21, a two-time national collegiate champion while at the University of Florida, proved to be a little rash and impatient, especially early. But she settled down to grind it out, and she whipped Garrison Jackson 5-7, 6-4, 6-3.
An athlete visiting the Art Institute–what a notion. It’s small comfort to know that if the women’s tennis tour stops coming to Chicago it won’t be just the city’s loss.
