“Otherwise I wouldn’t do it.”Seles looked completely out of sorts against the 20-year-old Nagyova, a tall, powerful player who made her opponent appear slow-footed and confused.Nagyova has won five titles in her career but had never beaten a top- 10 player. “I’ve had a hard time and I couldn’t concentrate the way I wanted to. But I can handle the situation better right now.”Schnyder said she believes her new diet, which includes drinking two to three litres of orange juice a day, will make her a better player in the long run “For sure.” she said. That’s why I’m number one.”Two months ago Schnyder controversially fired her coach and hired the mysterious German nutrition guru Rainer Harnecker. He has put her on a radical diet but Schnyder admits she is not firing on all cylinders.”I’m less confident,” said Schnyder, who won five titles last year.

Moving swiftly and counterpunching brilliantly against the left-hander, the 18-year-old Hingis forced Schnyder to go for outright winners, which the 20-year-old rarely made.Schnyder, seeded 10th, made 25 unforced errors against only 13 winners. “I tried to play aggressive, it’s the only way to beat her,” Schnyder said “I made too many mistakes I was risking too much. I was dominating a lot of the points, but I missed when I had to go for a winner She was running down all the balls and reacting well. She could read my game a little.”Hingis, who now has a 2-1 record against Schnyder, said that it was the best she had played against her.”Reading my opponents is my strength,” Hingis said “Most of the time that is my weapon on the court I pretty much know where the players want to go. Seles was swept out of the tournament by Slovakian Henrieta Nagyova 6- 2, 6-4 in the third round.
Hingis had few problems in beating fellow-Swiss Schnyder in just 54 minutes. Hingis advanced to a quarter-finals date with American Chanda Rubin, a 6-4, 6-4 upset winner over seventh seed Amanda Coetzer of South Africa.

MARTINA HINGIS, the world’s No 1 , continued her carefree skip through the $1.3 million Evert Cup in Indian Wells on Monday by dismissing Patty Schnyder 6-1, 6-3, but former top-ranked Monica Seles sank to defeat. Scholarships: G Cranton (show jumping), E Chandler (horse trials) and C Edmonds (dressage).. International Personality: M Roberts (US) for his contribution to horse welfare Horse of the Year: One Man Spillers Diamond Award: R Hobson, veterinary surgeon. That point was also illustrated when Word Perfect was injured last August, putting paid to Bartle’s indisputable claims for a place on the British team for the World Equestrian Games.And did our hero look pretty sour after that? Not at all; he turned up to continue his coaching duties for the team with a stoical smile and another of his pocketful of philosophical sayings: “You can guarantee that anybody who has spent a long time with horses will have suffered a similar disappointment.” Perhaps we could all learn something from that.SPILLERS EQUESTRIAN AWARDS (decided on votes cast by readers of Horse & Rider and Pony magazines): National Personality of the Year: C Bartle.

Then it wouldn’t have happened.”Every day with horses is, he says, a potential disaster. “It was the sort of thing I would have half expected him to do as a novice and I should have ridden him as though I didn’t quite trust him. In 1997, during the European Championships at Burghley, horse and rider parted company at the sixth cross-country fence. When close to the obstacle, Word Perfect had spotted a ditch beneath it; he swerved to the left in mid-air while the unfortunate Bartle went to the right.”Horses are there to make you look like an idiot,” a rueful Bartle said.

There the horse was sold to Adrian and Elaine Cantwell, with Bartle keeping the ride until after next year’s Olympic Games in Sydney.The Cantwells have since shared a couple of major disappointments as well as a great victory. “I was desperate to get someone to buy him who would let me keep the ride,” he said.To this end, he took a video of Blenheim (where Word Perfect finished third in 1996) on one of his jaunts to Hong Kong. His previous best place was 25th.Bartle had bought Word Perfect with the idea of selling him on. Despite initial problems with ditches, however, the horse proved too good to part with. Last year he would happily have settled for a place in the top 10, so there was no pressure on him when he completed the clear show jumping round that was to give him victory over Mark Todd. He has spectacularly overshot a couple of his own goals as a competitor.