Venus tops Clijsters in abridged 'Showdown' final

Last night's "Showdown for the Billie Jean King Cup" at Madison Square Garden, a detour from the tour for four prominent names in women's tennis, narrowed down to Venus Williams' erratic power against Kim Clijsters' comeback-from-motherhood athletic bona fides.

But it was more a tennis demo than a competition, more a montage of movie trailers than a feature presentation, with three drastically truncated, fast-forward "matches" - abandoned in droves by the announced crowd of 11,702 long before its conclusion. Two one-set semifinals, Clijsters over Ana Ivanovic, 7-6 (2), and Williams over Svetlana Kuznetsova, 6-4, set up the best-of-three final - like the semifinals, with no-ad scoring - a feisty 6-4, 3-6, 7-5 Williams victory.

Clijsters, who won last year's U.S. Open after a two-year sabbatical, pronounced the format both "fun" and "not easy; you have to be focused from the beginning."

Certainly, for the competitors - all with major-tournament titles on their resumes - it was worth a brief stopover in Big Town as the pro tour switches from overseas to the States. Semifinal losers earned $200,000 apiece, Williams $400,000 and Clijsters $300,000.

"I'd love to be back here every year if you guys will have us," Williams said. "Tennis back at the Garden; I love it."

It was the second early-March Garden presentation of a reframed tournament concept for the 21st century's short attention span, following a glitzy 2008 exhibition melding separate-era champs Roger Federer and Pete Sampras. Serena Williams defeated her older sister in last year's final.

Serena Williams, the world's top-ranked player, had agreed to play again this year but withdrew a week ago, citing a leg injury suffered on her way to January's Australian Open title. Ivanovic, slumping since her 2008 French Open title and now ranked 27th, was her replacement. "Serena really wanted to be here," Venus Williams said, "but I can fly the Williams flag here on my own."

The exhibition of marquee players, what old champion Martina Navratilova used to describe as "hit-and-giggle tennis," was packaged with what tennis officials called "Tennis Night in America." Watch parties at tennis facilities and community centers across the country were arranged in conjunction with youth sign-up programs.

The Garden program included a warm-up act of "future stars," with 14-year-old Sachia Vickery of Miramar, Fla., winning a lightning-round one-setter over 16-year-old Nicole Gibbs of Manhattan Beach, Calif., and the introduction of the 2010 International Tennis Hall of Fame class - the doubles teams of Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde and Gigi Fernandez and Natasha Zvereva, masters star Owen Davidson, wheelchair tennis pioneer Brad Parks and the late British tennis official Derek Hardwick.

Billie Jean King herself did not attend, offering her written regrets because she is recovering from recent double-knee replacement. With the Garden's upper deck closed and thousands of aqua and mauve seats visible among the quickly dispersing crowd, the question was whether such gimmicky tennis, at times of high quality but severely abbreviated, has legs.