HOME DEPOT CHAMPIONSHIPS INSIDE LOOK: LONG SEASON TAKES ITS TOLL BURNOUT DOGS TOUR AT FINALE.

Byline: Lauren Gustus Staff Writer

The catch phrase all week long at the WTA Championships at Staples Center has been the same: ``We're tired.''

Justine Henin said it Friday after she lost to Kim Clijsters 6-2, 6-1. It was heard from Monica Seles after she fell to Venus Williams 7-5, 6-4. And Magdelena Maleeva echoed Henin and Seles on Saturday afternoon after going down to Jennifer Capriati 6-2, 4-6, 6-1. Maleeva knew she sounded like a broken record.

``I'm going to say the same thing as everyone else,'' Maleeva said. ``I'm tired.''

So let's exhaust the talk about being spent.

Ask instead why players are wiped out. And, short of dumping a truck full of hot sauce on the tour, is there any way to spice things up at the end of the season?

Top-level players can spend more than a dozen years on the WTA Tour, playing a 10- or 11-month season that crisscrosses the globe. Lindsay Davenport reached the second round of the U.S. Open before she reached her senior year in high school.

``I started playing 11 events when I was 15, turned pro when I was 16,'' Davenport said. ``It gets tiring after 10 or 11 years. ... It's so exciting in the beginning that I think at some point, you find that women retire a lot earlier. I think Graf was 28, Sabatini 26.''

Seles entered her first professional tournament in 1988, just after she turned 14, and in 1991, at age 17, was the youngest No. 1 player ever. Maleeva turned pro in 1989, when she was 14.

But it's not easy to make changes. If the season is curtailed, the tour will lose money, and cities that have hosted tournaments for years inevitably will be cut from the schedule.

Seles, who has been on the tour for half her life, is a member of the Sanex WTA Tour Players Council and thinks the answer to the burnout question is simply less tennis.

``No other sport has the demand that tennis has,'' Seles said. ``I didn't play for a month and one week, and I'm back down to No. 6 or 7 from 4.''

Because they start so early and play often, players get hurt sooner (Clijsters broke her arm in January at the Australian Open when she was just 19), get worn out sooner (Serena Williams took the month of October off, citing exhaustion) or are more likely to snap from the pressure (as Capriati did, taking a well-publicized, two-year hiatus from tennis in 1994).

``I hope the tour and the players can find a solution,'' Seles said. ``I don't think it will happen in my career, but for the younger ones, you look at last year and this year, you had so many players injured at 18-20 years old. That's way too young to ... lose top names in a sport like that.''

Capriati thinks a break somewhere in the middle also might work.

``I got home from Europe and I was really happy. ... I'm happy it's the last tournament,'' Capriati said. ``I think there should be a longer break (at the end of the season). Or a break in between.''

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Magdalena Maleeva, who lost to Jennifer Capriati on Saturday, echoed other players' complaints about being tired after a long season.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer