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No early upsets at Open

The march of champions stomped on at the US Open tennis championships, with former winners Martina Hingis, Lindsay Davenport, and Serena Williams all tallying impressive wins and spots in the third round Wednesday.

Hingis, the women's top seed, played the Open's fastest match this year, needing just 37 minutes to brush past Lina Krasnoroutskaya. Davenport took 42 minutes to win; Williams, a comparatively leisurely 44. Davenport, the No. 3 seed who won here in 1998, swept past Emilie Loit of France. "I feel great," she said of her quick stay under the hot sun. "Since I've come back from the knee injury in June, I've been really consistent with my play."

At the time, it seemed like such a small trade. The Los Angeles Sparks sent two reserves to the Charlotte Sting for a center to back up Lisa Leslie. Little did either team know how big a deal it would turn out to be. Allison Feaster and Clarisse Machanguana, those two Los Angeles castaways, are now key players for Charlotte, which hosted the Sparks in Game 1 of the best-of-three WNBA finals last night.

"When you make a trade, you try to send players where they can't come back to haunt you - to the Eastern Conference," Los Angeles coach Michael Cooper said Wednesday. "Yet here they are, and we're hoping they don't come back to bite us."

John Franco, a veteran of two strikes and a lockout, doesn't have any advice for teammates on whether to expect another work stoppage after this season. "Nobody's said nothin' yet," the New York Mets' reliever said. "It's been quiet - which is nice."

Baseball's labor contract expires two months from Friday. The sport has gone through eight work stoppages since 1972, and some owners want major economic changes, saying baseball has become a game that only the rich teams win. "I'm proceeding cautiously," commissioner Bud Selig said this week, "trying to learn from the mistakes of the past, not trying to engage, frankly, in communication that becomes a problem for both sides."