Breakers clash with Capitals

The Newport Beach Breakers are the surprise team in the World Team Tennis semifinals today after a 6-8 regular season.

But after defeating the Springfield Lasers, 23-18, in the wild-card match Thursday night, the Breakers still have a shot at making their third consecutive WTT final appearance.

The Breakers (7-8) take on the Sacramento Capitals (10-4) today at 3 p.m. at Palisades Tennis Club.

The Philadelphia Freedoms (8-6) face the New York Sportimes (10-4) at 7 p.m.

The semifinal winners square off in the final on Sunday at 1 p.m., also at Palisades.

Newport Beach’s Pete Sampras remains questionable for the match after aggravating a strained left hamstring during Thursday night’s wild-card match against Springfield. He originally strained the hamstring July 21 against Hartford.

WTT co-founder Billie Jean King said she had not heard from Sampras regarding a final decision as of early Friday evening.

Sampras or no Sampras, King doesn’t expect the Palisades Tennis Club to sell out this weekend. Marquee players such as Anna Kournikova of Sacramento, Venus Williams of Philadelphia, and John McEnroe and Martina Hingis of the Sportimes are not expected to compete.

But King says that’s not why the Palisades Tennis Club will not sell out.

“I don’t think [attendance] will be very good for the playoffs,” King said. “We had no time to promote it. This is the first year we tried this [having the playoffs directly after the regular season]. You only know who is playing a couple days before. Ideally you need a week to promote it.”

Last year, the regular season ended July 24 for the Breakers and the playoffs didn’t start until Sept. 16, which allowed marquee players such as Hingis and Martina Navratilova to compete.

Will there be changes after this season?

“We always re-evaluate after every season,” said King, who played in the first WTT match ever for the Philadelphia Freedoms in 1974 and was named the Female Most Valuable Player of the league that season.

Kournikova played five regular-season matches with the Capitals, who will most likely go with a lineup of Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Elena Likhovtseva, Mark Knowles, the league MVP last season, and Sam Warburg. That lineup was good enough for Sacramento to secure a pair of 20-17 wins over the Breakers this season.

Sampras (3-5 in singles sets this season, 26-33 in games) competed in the match at Sacramento on July 12 and fell to Warburg, 5-2.

At home against Sacramento, Alex Kuznetsov replaced an injured Ramon Delgado and defeated Warburg, 5-1. It was Kuznetsov’s only appearance of the season for the Breakers.

Delgado, who tops the WTT with a .625 men’s singles winning percentage, is slated to make his first appearance of the season against the Capitals today.

Delgado will most likely play men’s singles and men’s doubles if Sampras is unable to compete.

“Delgado is the star of the team,” King said. “No question about it.”

Delgado is slated to be joined in the lineup by Rick Leach, Anastassia Rodionova and Tina Krizan. Rodionova split her two singles sets with Pavlyuchenkova during the regular season.