Williams, Dokic, Maleeva advance in WTA Championships

<br>LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Serena Williams of the United States defeated Israel's Anna Smashnova 6-2, 6-2 in 54 minutes Thursday to open defense of her title in the sparsely attended, season-ending WTA

Friday, November 8th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Serena Williams of the United States defeated Israel's Anna Smashnova 6-2, 6-2 in 54 minutes Thursday to open defense of her title in the sparsely attended, season-ending WTA Championships.

``I have a large bounty on my head now,'' said Williams, the world's top-ranked player who has a leading eight titles and a 54-4 record this year.

Williams hadn't played a tournament in more than a month, and the layoff showed. Her six aces were offset by six double faults and she committed 28 unforced errors.

Smashnova, however, failed to hit a single winner while Williams had 28.

``I felt a bit rusty. I'd give myself a C-minus,'' Williams said. ``It's a matter of mentally focusing in again. The tougher the opponent, the more I'll focus in.''

Williams advanced to a Saturday quarterfinal against Yugoslav No. 8 Jelena Dokic, who beat Anastasia Myskina of Russia 6-3, 6-4 in just over an hour in front of a few hundred people at Staples Center.

``She overpowered me,'' said Smashnova, who won four titles this year and was in the championships for the first time.

Dressed in a salmon-colored dress, salmon-and-white shoes and a pink headband, Williams did her customary pirouette on her way to the net and then blew kisses to all sides of the court in front of only a few thousand fans.

``It's L.A. Everybody is at home, doing something, going to a premiere,'' she said. ``On weekdays it's tough to get people to come out to the matches. I do perform better in front of a large crowd. I guess that whole entertainer thing in me comes out.''

A year ago, she won the tournament in Germany when fellow American Lindsay Davenport couldn't play the final because of injury.

``The way I played today it's not looking so good,'' Williams said of her chances of a repeat.

Magdalena Maleeva of Bulgaria surprised No. 7 Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia 6-2, 7-5 in another first-round match.

No. 3 Jennifer Capriati defeated Silvia Farina Elia of Italy 7-5, 6-1 and will play Maleeva on Saturday. Capriati broke Farina Elia three times in the second set, including the fourth game that went to deuce six times before Farina Elia netted a forehand.

For the second consecutive day, Staples Center was mostly empty for the tournament that determines the WTA Tour's final rankings of the year. It was so quiet during the afternoon that dishes rattling in the 20,000-seat arena's restaurant could be heard on court.

Dokic is one of the tour's most well-traveled players. The championships are her 29th tournament of the year and she is coming off a stretch in which she played five consecutive weeks.

By comparison, Serena Williams is competing in just her 12th tournament.

``A lot of players are getting tired and injured. Mentally, I'm really feeling it more than physically,'' said Dokic, who plans to reduce her schedule to about 20 tournaments next year. ``It's really hard to fight out there when you play so many matches.''

Dokic and Myskina met for the sixth time this year. Dokic leads the series 4-2.

``Every time she's played differently,'' Dokic said. ``When it's the bigger matches, I think she gets nervous.''

Making her debut in the championships, Myskina led 2-0 in the first set and then held serve for a 3-3 tie before losing three straight games and the set 6-3. In the second set, Myskina trailed 5-4 and held two break points on Dokic's serve, but Dokic came up with winners both times. Dokic finally won on the third match point, when Myskina's forehand sailed long.

Maleeva hasn't been a force on the tour since 1995, when she won three titles. But she came into Los Angeles on a roll, having won in Moscow with victories over top-10 players Venus Williams, Amelie Mauresmo and Lindsay Davenport. She also was a finalist in Luxembourg and is ranked 15th in the world.

``The main thing is that I'm concentrating on my matches and I know much better what I want to do with the game,'' said Maleeva, the youngest of three pro-tennis-playing sisters. ``I know what I want to try in the game and I stay focused much better than I used to.''

Hantuchova, 19, complained of being tired. She helped her native Slovakia win its first Federation Cup title over Spain on Sunday in the Canary Islands, then traveled to Los Angeles.

``I felt like I got nothing left,'' she said. ``I was making too many mistakes and it cost me the match. I need to take some time off.''