`CHAMPIONSHIP' TAG DOESN'T FOOL US.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

The umpire at the Jennifer Capriati-Maggie Maleeva tennis match Saturday afternoon kept asking the Staples Center crowd for ``quiet, please,'' finally getting personal as Capriati pulled away in the third set and demanding, ``Ladies and gentlemen in the VIP boxes, would you remain quiet, please!''

It's not that the L.A. crowd was at all rowdy, it's that it was so sparse that even during the points, without the usual light human buzz to provide white noise, people's normal conversations and infants' soft burbling in the luxury suites could be heard by the athletes a couple of hundred feet away.

On the weekend, the stands were supposed to fill up at the tournament billed as ``the World Championship of Women's Tennis,'' but attendance for this daytime session was estimated at 2,000 to 3,000. No single seating section was full as Capriati beat Bulgaria's Maleeva 6-2, 4-6, 6-1 in a quarterfinal.

The empty seats aren't a tennis story, they're an L.A. story.

Maybe more than anywhere else in the sports nation, fans here recognize a ``championship'' when we see one. And the event known in the trade as the Home Depot Championships Presented by Porsche - and known in this newspaper as the WTA Championships - is one in name only.

``It doesn't feel like it (a championship), does it?'' Maleeva said.

What does it feel like to you, somebody asked.

``It feels like it's the end of the year and I want to go home.''

Almost every player in the select, 16-woman field complains of fatigue at the end of the 10-month season, so it's hardly the time to have a meaningful circuit-championship playoff.

Tahiti, anyone?

On a broader point: A sport with points rankings, earnings standings and Grand Slam events - with the Williams sisters - doesn't need a ``world championship'' tournament.

I mean, if Kim Clijsters, the fifth seed who smoked fellow Belgian Justine Henin in a Friday quarterfinal, somehow gets past Venus Williams in a semifinal today and either Capriati or Serena Williams in the final Monday, would anybody hail her as the sport's champion?

``I think it's up there like winning a Grand Slam,'' Capriati said of the tournament, which seems like an overstatement, ``but I wouldn't go as far as to say whoever wins this is the real world champion or No. 1.''

Theories are bouncing around the arena, like topspin lobs, on why this $3 million tournament, one of the circuit's richest, has proved to be such a tough sell in its first appearance at Staples Center after 29 years at New York's Madison Square Garden and one in Munich: wet weather outside, weak pre-event publicity, the fact it's Southern California's fifth pro tennis event of the year.

But the real explanation is it's Los Angeles, and you can't fool us.

This year, we've seen the Lakers and Angels win championships, hosted the college football national-championship game at the Rose Bowl and the U.S. figure-skating championships and the NHL All-Star Game at Staples Center, and paid more than passing attention to the Olympic winter games and the soccer World Cup.

Tennis players are tired? Hey, L.A. sports fans are worn out, too.

We're also informed, seasoned and discriminating.

So, when the public-address announcer tells the fans this tournament ``will determine the season's final point standings,'' more than a few know that in truth Serena Williams is so far in front, she's going to wind up No. 1 no matter what happens here.

The official crowd counts for the two daily sessions has been growing, from 6,200 Wednesday to 6,700 Thursday to 10,000 Friday to 11,347 Saturday, 6,559 for the night session in which Serena Williams beat Jelena Dokic 7-6 (7-1), 6-0.

But the lasting image of the World Championship of Women's Tennis (whatever) will be 400-500 fans sitting in on Clijsters-Henin.

The tournament is scheduled for Staples Center for the next six years.

It doesn't need ``quiet, please,'' it needs some noise.