Rubin set to stand in for Seles

Tennis

Chanda Rubin will replace Monica Seles in the United States team for their Fed Cup final against Spain this weekend.

Rubin, 15th in the WTA world rankings, complained her back felt "tight" at a training session yesterday. "She feels fine now," the US Association spokeswoman said. "But Martina Navratilova is still on standby in the States."

Rubin joins the four-member American team with Lindsay Davenport, Mary Joe Fernandez and Gigi Fernandez. Seles, co-ranked as the world No 1, withdrew on Tuesday because of recurrent knee problems.

Rubin, 19, reached the finals of two WTA events this season before losing and was the only American to reach the quarter-finals in ths year's French Open.

Saturday and Sunday's Fed Cup final will be played on clay in Valencia. Spain have won the last two Fed Cups, led by clay-court specialists Aranxta Sanchez Vicario and Conchita Martinez - the two who will lead the team again this year. The Spaniards have been in the final for five of the last six years and have won three of them. The Americans, who have won a record 14 times in 32 Fed Cups, last won in 1990.

Seles is to play in Australia for the first time since January 1993. She has entered the Peters International tournament, one of the biggest warm-up events for the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam of 1996.

The Peters International, formerly the New South Wales Open, is held from 8-14 January, the week before the Australian Open begins in Melbourne.

Seles won the Australian Open for three consecutive years, the last in 1993 and three months before an on-court stabbing in Hamburg, Germany, forced her out of the game for 28 months. She has not played in Australia since.

Seles won her comeback tournament at the Canadian Open in Montreal last year and was runner-up to Steffi Graf at the US Open in September. But she was forced out of the indoor tournament in Oakland, California, at the end of last month with tendinitis in her left knee and missed this month's season-ending WTA championship in New York.