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 Comebacks and comeliness
Posted: Thursday July 29, 1999 06:35 PM
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- More than six years removed from the shoplifting charge, the marijuana bust and the personification of "burn-out," Jennifer Capriati is not merely still alive and writhing. She's quietly playing her best tennis since the Bush administration. At the startling age of 23 -- which somehow seems both impossibly young for someone who's been through so much, and impossibly old for someone who pierced the public consciousness a decade ago -- Capriati is winning events, racking up ranking points, and leading the kind of professional life she much prefers to being an international star besieged by demands and distractions at every tour event. "It's like a personal quest to find out how good I can be," she said after her first match at the Bank of the Classic. "I'm happy with myself as a person. Tennis is just a game and winning or losing is not going to get me through life." Refreshing as that perspective is, Capriati has been doing a lot more of the former lately. With a tournament win in Strasbourg on May 22 (her first "since forever"), Jennifer --pointedly, no longer Jenny -- acquitted herself well at the Grand Slams and walked off with the trophy at last weekend's A&P Classic in Mahwah, N.J. On Thursday night she patiently outlasted ninth-seed Conchita Martinez in the first round, betraying a patience simply absent from her repertoire in her earlier years. Given that Capriati reached the semifinals of Wimbledon and the U.S. Open at age 15 and won an Olympic gold medal a year later, these are modest victories, to be sure. "We all thought that she would have a closet full of Grand Slam titles by this point," says one contemporary on Tour. But Capriati, who blithely dismisses her Blue Period as "personal stuff," won't indulge the what-ifs. "I just want to look to the future and keep improving," she says. "I realize now that tennis is what I want to do." Back to earth Speaking of redemption, Patty Schnyder looked particularly sharp in her win Thursday over No. 20 Elena Likhovsteva . After finishing the 1998 season as the Tour's most improved player, Schnyder endured a wildly tumultuous few months earlier this year, in which she fired her coach to hook up with a mysterious "guru" and her own parents accused her of being in a cult. Her confidence dipping to subterranean levels and her focus disrupted by constant media scrutiny, she nearly fell out of the top 20 and suffered a series of lop-sided defeats to players she had crushed six months earlier. Having regained some normalcy to her life since firing the "guru", Schnyder is looking to recoup ranking points and "get back to playing tennis at level I'm happy with and not have deal with so many distractions." This ought to be a good place to start. Over the next month, she'll play the three California events, the Canadian Open and then the U.S. Open, on hard courts that suit her deceptively heavy game. By that time, she may get back to where she once belonged. Saving Face Make no mistake. The WTA Tour features some the world's best pro athletes. But you'd never guess it after scanning the press kit distributed to all credentialed media at the Bank of the West Classic. In addition to the pro forma "Kids Charity Day" announcements, the packet contains pictures of Anna Kournikova , Nathalie Tauziat and Dominique Van Roost dressed in formal gowns. The photos are accompanied by breathless captions. Here's a snippet from the Van Roost piece: "I love fashion. Especially classic, simple, elegant clothes. I don't really have a diet or beauty regime, but I do try to look after my skin. I try not to wear too much make-up as I do prefer to look natural. But I usually go to the hairdresser about once a month." Call me reactionary, but at a tennis tournament I expect to receive material about Van Roost's climb in the rankings, her latest match results and her tournament record. How often she visits the hairdresser is considerably less relevant information. Sure, sex sells. But when the WTA Tour markets its players as voluptuous vixens, it undercuts its own credibility and, more important, sells its athletes short. Sports Illustrated staff writer L. Jon Wertheim covers tennis for the magazine. Click here to send a question to his tennis mailbag. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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