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Stevenson loses in first round

Alexandra Stevenson made banner headlines this year at Wimbledon as much for the confirmation that she is the daughter of former basketball great Julius Erving as for becoming the first female qualifier to reach the semi-finals of that Grand Slam event.

But the Wimbledon wondergirl's return to the U.S. Open was short-lived after a 6-2, 6-2 first-round loss to 11th-seeded Nathalie Tauziat of France, who gave the bubbly Californian teen a 59-minute tennis lesson.

Seventh seed Serena Williams completed the first step in her father's master plan for an all-Williams women's final at the U.S. Open by overpowering fellow-American Kimberly Po 6-1, 6-0 under the lights at Arthur Aashe stadium last night.

The shorter, more muscular of the Williams sisters, the sixth-ranked Serena spent just 49 minutes on court as the diminutive Po had no response to the remarkable firepower of Williams's strokes.

''You never anticipate a match will go that quick. You just go out and try to do your best,'' said Williams after a successful start to her second career U.S. Open campaign.

Third-seeded big sister Venus breezed through her opening match on Monday and will face Anne-Gaelle Sidot of France in the second round tonight.

Displaying the awesome self-confidence that Richard Williams has instilled in both of his tennis-playing daughters, Serena fully expects to be playing the final on Saturday. ''I'm six matches away. I'm really looking forward to it.''

Williams believes that the meteoric rise to the elite levels of women's tennis by her sister and herself has helped broaden the tennis audience from its traditional country club roots.

''Grass is definitely a different game,'' said the 43rd-ranked Stevenson yesterday in explaining her success at Wimbledon. ''And my game's great on grass, and it will be great on hardcourt. I just need to work harder and learn a lot more and play some more matches.''

It appears that no matter what kind of controversy surrounds the 18-year-old, Stevenson has learned to keep up a bubbly demeanor, insisting nothing disrupts her life.

''There's an aftermath in the media, not in my life,'' Stevenson said of the revelation about Dr J. ''I'm the same person and I'm living the same life. Nothing's changed except cab drivers know me now.''

And so do young tennis fans who clamoured for her autograph following the match as if she were a bonefide star.

Nevertheless, Stevenson does say she would have preferred not to become a curiosity over her celebrity parentage. ''I would have liked to have kept my private life private, but some people thought that should have been discovered,'' Stevenson said. ''I mean, you have your good journalists and your bad journalists and the people like that like to divulge information.

''When you're in the public eye, a lot of people are going to want to know about your private life. You can't get upset about it because it happened, and it's going to happen.''

Stevenson, who won the bronze medal at the Pan American Games this summer, has now played the U.S. Open main draw twice, losing in the first round each time.

The American's game was sloppy on all fronts, having great difficulty with both her offence and defence, recording 28 unforced errors to only 7 winners.

Stevenson might not have played a winning game against Tauziat, but she always talks the talk of a winner. Always taking a positive stance, even saying she went to Wimbledon planning to win a first Grand Slam title, Stevenson has the mentality of a champion.

''My goals are .... a lot of people say, they're very lofty, but I don't say they are, and I hate that word by the way,'' Stevenson said. ''So whenever anyone says that, I get kind of upset.

''My mom always told me, I think it is 'you reach for the stars and you land on the moon'.''

UNI