NEVER BETTER; WOMEN'S TENNIS NOW A POWER-PACKED SHOW.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Last weekend at the women's tennis tournament in Carlsbad, a few of us watched a night-time semifinal match on TV in the press room, close to our lap-tops. There was deadline tension until, during a break in the action, a comical video clip appeared on the screen.

It showed the final point of the 1979 U.S. Open, in which Tracy Austin beat Chris Evert for the title. They looked ridiculous, Tracy in her ``Little House on the Prairie'' dress and Chrissy in her bangs. But that wasn't the funny part.

Austin served. The ball followed the approximate trajectory of the Gateway Arch. Evert slammed a forehand return. It blooped into the net. Game, set, match. And doubled-over laughter in the press room.

``Boy,'' Austin said sarcastically on TV, where she was doing the color commentary, ``we really hit the ball hard.''

In 1979, fans might reasonably have assumed women's tennis was as good as it could get. At the end of that season, the top five in the world rankings - the U.S. Open finalists plus Martina Navratilova, Evonne Goolagong Cawley and Billy Jean King - were once or future No. 1 players, the only time that has happened. And Andrea Jaeger was on her way up.

Yet, looking back, they were just patting the ball around. Since that supposed pinnacle, the game has only gotten better. In the past two decades, no already-prominent sport has changed, just in the way it's played, as much as women's tennis.

Forget about the glamour and personality of the teen-age ``Brat Pack,'' widely credited with reviving interest in tournaments like this week's Acura Classic at Manhattan Country Club. What makes women's tennis better than ever these days is simply that they hit the ball so damned hard.

It's difficult to appreciate if you only watch on TV. Everything looks slower from the baseline camera.

Come to a tournament. Get a seat on the sidelines. Be prepared for the furious back-and-forth to give your neck a full chiropractic treatment. Watch Monica Seles up close. Say goodbye to your image of her as a frail kid sister. The woman kills the ball.

The game used to be about waiting for the other woman to mis-hit. Players could lob their moonballs and slices from the baseline all afternoon. To cite an extreme example, at a Richmond, Va., tournament in 1984, pros Vicki Nelson-Dunbar and Jean Hepner played a 29-minute point; the ball crossed the net 643 times. Their match took 6 hours, 31 minutes for two sets. Who won? Who cared anymore?

They don't play pattycake anymore. Women armed with oversized rackets and visible muscle serve big, charge the net, hammer volleys. Women hit topspin. From the baseline they're able to mix in a dropshot. The sheer variety is splendid.

``It's more aggressive, people are more fit, they're hitting the ball harder,'' said Natalie Tauziat, the Wimbledon finalist who won her first-round match over Chanda Rubin 6-4, 7-5 here Tuesday. Tauziat, at 30 the second-oldest in the tournament, has pushed her ranking back up to No. 11, a career high she first reached in 1992.

``When I was 11 (the first time), the tennis was easier,'' she said.

One difference from the '70s is the rackets - wider and lighter and thus more forgiving and powerful. The howitzers that have turned the men's game into a numbing succession of one-shot rallies has saved the women's game from a numbing succession of numbing successions.

Turn back the calendar and give Austin and Evert today's weapons, and maybe they'd rip the ball too.

That's a question of will as much as technology. The truism on the tour was that Americans copied Evert's baseline style and the rest of the world copied Navratilova's power game. But only after the Iron Curtain came down did tennis fully open up to the rest of the world. Now eight countries are represented in the top 12.

Navratilova's influence was felt in the area of fitness as well.

``I can remember going to have dinner with Martina,'' said Lee Jackson, a WTA Tour administrator, remembering Navratilova's early, underconditioned days, ``and her ordering three kinds of meat.''

When Navratilova toned up, her rivals had to keep up, and the result was today's superathletic style. Her present-day equivalent, Lindsay Davenport, is the latest example of what improving your fitness will do.

As Steffi Graf is discovering after nine months away following knee surgery, the tour is deeper than it has been in decades. Until the past two years, when first Martina Hingis, then Iva Majoli, then Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and then Jana Novotna scored Grand Slam upsets, it had been 16 years since back-to-back Grand Slams were won by lower than first or second seeds.

``She has played well,'' Tauziat said. ``But the tour is better. That's why it's hard for her to come back.''

The women's tour is better than ever. It has personality. It has depth. And most of all, they hit the ball so damned hard.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color) Serena Williams is one of the players who has transformed women's tennis from the days of Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert.

Kevork Djansezian/Associated Press

(2) no caption (Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova)