HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — Monica Seles was looking for a sign of success in the Family Circle Cup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She finally found one on center court on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Seles, ranked third, was losing the second set to ninth-seeded Elena Likhovtseva, she noticed a sign in the top rows that said “Monica rules the clay.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Thank God that’s true today,” said Seles, who with the crowd’s support pulled out a third-set tiebreaker to beat Likhovtseva 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (7-5) and reach the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seles won the season’s first clay court tournament at Amelia Island, Fla., last week, and continued her strong play against Likhovtseva, who ousted Seles here in this round a year ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This time, Seles fought back when Likhovtseva blitzed through the second set and led 6-5 in the third. The seven-time Grand Slam champion nailed a 103 mph ace and zipped a forehand past Likhovtseva to force the tiebreaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seles was defeated in third-set tiebreakers at Sea Pines Racquet Club in the 1997 finals by Martina Hingis and the 1998 semifinals by Irina Spirlea. She trailed 2-0 in this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the packed crowd calling her name and urging her on, Seles hit a laser-like backhand winner to take her first lead, 4-3. Likhovtseva saved two match points before pushing a forehand wide and Seles was spared another close defeat here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seles has already had a memorable season, winning at Oklahoma City and Amelia Island and reaching the semifinals of the Ericsson Open in which she lost to Hingis 6-0, 6-0. Seles knows she’s still far from the form that won three straight French Opens from 1990-92.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Likhovtseva said she would close in and overtake Seles, then wait for her opponent to falter. “She’s not the kind of player who does that too often,” Likhovtseva said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No one will likely come close to Seles’ fan support. Despite never winning in three previous tries, Seles was the runaway favorite of the gallery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They “really helped me to regroup a lot there and just know that, OK, people are still believing in you even if you are not at this point in your own self,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — Monica Seles was looking for a sign of success in the Family Circle Cup. She finally found one on center court on Thursday. While Seles, ranked third, was losing the second set to ninth-seeded Elena Likhovtseva, she noticed a sign in the top rows that said “Monica rules the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,56],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7401"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}I think I was really frustrated with my serve today and it just let me down a lot in the match,'' said Seles, who will next face 11th-seeded Ruxandra Dragomir.<\/code>I let Elena come back tons of times and here I said `This is happening in the tiebreak.’ I was lucky she just missed that shot on match point.”<\/p>\n\n\n\nI'm playing some good tennis periods, but also I have huge drops in my game,'' Seles said.<\/code>Today, I definitely had some huge drops and then I had some really good highs, so hopefully, I’ll get a little bit more consistent in a couple of aspects of my game.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n