Power of Caring
  presented by CIGNA

Issue date: April 7, 1997

If she were older, of course, Martina Hingis would have paused for a moment last Saturday and tried to capture it all. She would have stood in the stadium at Key Biscayne after destroying her former idol, and she would have taken in the nectar-sweet Florida air, the blue sky and the cheering of 12,164 people who knew they had just witnessed a bit of history, a rare confluence of youth, genius and achievement. If she were older, Hingis would have known that memories of days like this can later ease days that aren't. But she is 16, and the wonderful thing about being 16 is that you can play flawless tennis and thrash the great Monica Seles 6-2, 6-1 in the Lipton Championships final without having to stop and savor it. You blast a backhand winner that freezes Seles at match point and skip to the net with a half-moon grin and take the trophy and rush off, because at 16 you have no doubt that tomorrow and every day after it will feel just like this.

"Why should I be worried about the future?" Hingis said afterward. "Right now, almost everything is perfect." Hingis, who was certain to become No. 1 on the Women's Tennis Association computer regardless of how she performed in the Lipton, roared through the tournament the same way she has roared through 1997—undefeated and virtually unchallenged. She handled all comers so creatively that they didn't just lose; they were awed. "She's different," said ninth-ranked Irina Spirlea, who lost to Hingis during the latter's march to the '97 Australian Open title. "She was born to play tennis. You cannot work at this. Even if you work at it, you cannot have it like she has it."

Hingis is frolicking through the oft-nightmarish world of the women's tour like, well, a kid cutting loose. "I have never enjoyed tennis as much as I do now," she said daily at the Lipton, and she proved it by grinning her way through a full slate of singles and doubles matches—she made it to the women's doubles semifinals—interviews and photo sessions, laughing off the idea of feeling pressure and never ducking behind little-girl modesty. After she took apart much-hyped phenom Venus Williams in straight sets in the third round, a tennis official handed Hingis one of the colored beads that had fallen from Williams's braids and said she should tell people it was a souvenir. Hingis scoffed, "I'll say something better than that." She walked into her press conference, flung the bead into the crowd like a brave tossing a fresh scalp and said with a giggle, "I have a nice present for you. One of Venus's pearls."

Another day, asked if she felt unbeatable, Hingis said, "Well, I am."

Arrogant? Sure. Exhausted? "What does it mean—exhausted?" Hingis said.

"Very tired."

"Me?" she said.

Is it any wonder that the beleaguered powers of women's tennis look upon Hingis as a savior? For most of the '90s, the women's game has been rocked by one melodramatic episode after another, with Jennifer Capriati (drugs), Mary Pierce (abusive father), Steffi Graf (tax-dodging dad) and Seles (stabbed by a deranged Graf fan) grouped together like some doleful Mount Rushmore, a monument to one sport's lost generation. Two years ago the WTA, in an effort to reduce the pressure on adolescent players, declared that girls had to be 18 to play the tour full time but conveniently grandfathered in Hingis, then 14 years old. Hingis, a Czech-born Swiss citizen who has been playing since she was two, was and is driven to succeed by her flinty mother, Melanie Molitor, who dismisses burnout as an American creation. Asked Saturday if she was at all apprehensive about her daughter's taking over the No. 1 spot so young, Molitor said, "Why should I be? It's what we wanted."

And if Hingis's career was to end right now, you could argue that Molitor and the WTA were right to let her join the tour at 14. So far, Hingis has shown she can handle the rigors of constant travel and the boredom of hotel life. She doesn't take herself or her career too seriously; she rides horses without a helmet, in-line skates without pads. Before one of her matches at the Lipton, while rain poured onto a slippery practice court, Hingis ran full-bore after balls. She wears the mantle of stardom lightly. In fact, she might remind you of the woman she displaced Monday as the youngest No. 1 in history. When Seles reached the top at age 17, she too was vivacious and happy, a giggling Madonna fan with killer strokes and a champion's will.

"She was just great at that time," said Hingis, who at nine saw Seles play at a tournament in Zurich. "She just looked different. She had this hair, blonde; then she cut it. I liked her personality a lot, yes."

But on Saturday, Hingis happened upon a different Seles: a player with ragged concentration and a game in disrepair. Seles, 23, is far more thoughtful than she was six years ago. She seldom giggles. Partly this is because she spent the last four months away from tennis, recovering from a muscle tear in her left shoulder and from a broken right ring finger, the latter courtesy of a practice serve by Hingis before an exhibition in Geneva on Dec. 2, Seles's birthday. "Great birthday present I got," Seles says about the injury, and, yes, she sounds resigned to her bad luck. Who can blame her? Shortly thereafter, her Yorkshire terrier, Astro, died. And in February, Seles received news from Germany that her final appeal of the suspended sentence given to Gunther Parche, the man who stabbed her at a tournament in Hamburg in 1993, had been denied, and he will remain free.

Seles decided to spend New Year's Eve with friends in the Caribbean—a way to start fresh. As she puts it, "I was thinking, O.K., 1997, new year. Better things." Just after midnight, she called her mother and father at their home in Sarasota, Fla. No one answered. She called her brother, Zoltan, and wished him a happy New Year. "I don't know if I should tell you this," Zoltan said. Their father, Karolj, who had twice battled cancer, in his stomach and prostate, had collapsed at home and was in the hospital. Cancer again. "Now it's back in his stomach," Monica says. "And it's metastasized."

Karolj was Monica's coach, but unlike many tennis fathers, he never pushed his daughter further than she wanted to be pushed. He backed away from reflected glory. After her stabbing, he kept urging Monica to enjoy tennis as a game, nothing more. The Lipton, her first full tournament since her career-worst loss—6-2, 6-0 to Hingis in Oakland in November—was also the first tournament she'd ever played without her dad in attendance. Monica decided to play a full schedule this year because she senses that Karolj's spirits lift when she and he talk tennis. "The hardest thing is not being there with him," she says. "Because of the time: Who knows how much time he has? I'm not going to see him much this year, and that's something I'm struggling with. I'm not a baby anymore. I've got to realize that I've got to take care of my dad, I've got to be there for him. Anytime you see your parent suffer, and it drags on and on, it's hard. It makes you think about your own death."

Seles has a hitting partner, but she runs her practices now. At the hotel in Key Biscayne, at the stadium before matches—in fact, everywhere during the Lipton—she felt lonely. Even as he endures chemotherapy at home, Karolj faxes Monica advice. When he was in the hospital in January, he wrote her thick sheaves of instructions on how to handle her career one, five, 10 years from now. During the Lipton she called home twice daily, before and after each match, but the new tone of the conversations took some adjusting to. In the past, Karolj had always spoken to Monica about the parts of her game that weren't working, the things she could improve on. "Now," Monica said, "he just says, 'Be happy.'"

On Saturday in the stadium, Seles wasn't. Yes, she had had moments at Key Biscayne when her game seemed to take shape, but they occurred against opponents such as Barbara Paulus and Asa Carlsson. Twice Seles was pressed to three sets in matches that once would have been automatic wins. "I can't have the focus I had four or five years ago," she said. Against Hingis, she had none. Her first serve was gone, her ground strokes mere ghosts of what they once were. The match took 44 minutes. Hingis played superbly, nailing an astonishing 74% of her first serves. She broke Seles six times and made only eight unforced errors.

"She just seems to be having a great time," Seles said. "She told me this is the best time of her life."

Afterward Hingis spoke about her tennis and about being No. 1, but soon that grew old, and she spoke of teenagers' subjects: Her mother ("She only wants the best for me"). Dating ("Traveling so much, it's hard to find somebody at the tournament; you would have to go every week with someone else"). Being underage ("I still can't drive the car; I still can't go out"). Money—she has made more than $1 million on the court already this year ("Wow, the money is rolling, rolling"). Then her eyes danced, and she laughed, and everyone laughed with her. Everything was perfect.