The Sanex WTA Tour's Chase Championships bid farewell
to MSG yesterday, as Martina Hingis defeated Monica Seles in
the final to end the event's 22-year-run in N.Y. The event
will be played in Munich starting next year, and in Boston,
Bud Collins writes that the move is a "shameful fatality
perpetrated thoughtlessly and cruelly by the organization
that is supposed to oversee the health of the women's game:
the [WTA]." Collins: "Led by a usually considerate lawyer,
Bart McGuire, this WTA switch was made for the usual reason:
money." Collins writes the event in Munich "will mean
nothing," and "no only is the move shortsighted, but cruel
because it's a kick in the face of the gallant Seles," who
was stabbed at an event in Hamburg in '93 and "has suffered
so much adversity." Moving the Chase to Munich "also caused
the shutdown" of the women's stop in Philadelphia the
preceding week. Collins: "This is where the [USTA] should
step in and protest the damage done to the game in this
country. Though it has no official standing in regard to
the WTA, the USTA does have the role of nurturing and
preserving the game in America. It would behoove the USTA
to work with Chase and the Garden to retrieve the tourney,
which, it has been learned, could be bought and brought
back" (BOSTON GLOBE, 11/20). In N.Y., Filip Bondy writes of
the event's departure: "Somehow, we'll survive. The Chase
Championships were never really embraced by the city, not in
the same way as the Open." Attendance this year was a
"middling" 94,133 (N.Y. DAILY NEWS, 11/20).
