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Is Capriati Good Jen or Bad Jen? Posted: Monday August 26, 2002 12:06 PM
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim will answer your tennis questions every Monday. Click here to send a question. With the U.S. Open under way, we go straight to the questions this week. Check back each evening for daily reports from Flushing Meadows. While I've got you, can we cut through all the now consistent innuendo (not just in the Mailbag but in nearly every news report) and ask: What is the deal with Jennifer Capriati? Is she just petulant and we never knew it, or is there something that is particularly bothering her at the moment? I love watching her play and love her comeback story even more, but her cursing and arguing (mostly wrongly) line calls every week is beginning to turn me off. She seems caring and lovely sometimes, and then a cranky, moody mess. On balance, is she a good witch or a bad witch?
What's up with the Capster? It's a good question that many within and without the tour are asking. Capriati is a charter member of the sports world's All-Comeback Team and, by all rights, should be thrilled with where she stands and how she redirected her career. She got a second chance, made the most of it and should be smiling from now until eternity. Instead, she has the angst-ridden disposition of someone auditioning for a role in Todd Solondz's next movie. And that's when the going is good. When it's not, she swears like a stevedore, gripes about calls, dresses down Billie Jean King and gets booted from the Fed Cup team, takes digs at the Williams sisters, blows off interviews, disses the Tennis Channel (she would only watch it if she "was really bored"), and generally acts like there is no place she'd rather be less than in the tennis world. Again.
Whatever, it sure would be nice if she betrayed a little more joy. Given where's she been and where she is now, she's playing with house money. What's your opinion of the other blonde Russian without a title, Elena Dementieva? She suffered another early loss (albeit a close one) in New Haven. What is she missing? Is it all in her head? What will it take for her to finally win a title? OK, here's a tough question: If one of the biggest reasons why neither of these ladies can win a tournament is that they lack mental strength, who do you think would win a final played between these two?
Dementieva has been a big mystery. Many observers and players -- including no less than Lindsay Davenport -- pronounced Dementieva "Next Big Thing" material when she surfaced two years ago to reach the U.S. Open semifinals. Though she was a blonde Russian of roughly the same age, she was, in other regards, the anti-Anna -- an understated personality who played chess in the players' lounge and, at the time, lacked a boyfriend, agent and clothing deal. On the court, she was consistent and cerebral. Yet since 2000 she has gone NASDAQ on us. She's had a few injuries and switched rackets when she signed a contract, which contributed to her woes. But the biggest reasons for her slippage: First, her serve is shaky and, as we've seen countless times in women's tennis, when a player struggles with her service, her whole game goes to pot. Second, Dementieva might be from the school of being too self-aware and self-possessed -- in short, too smart -- for her own good. (Recent distinguished alumni: Amelie Mauresmo, Todd Martin and Jana Novotna.) Others can play this cognitive dissonance game and, with few conflicting thoughts passing through the transom, trick themselves into thinking that they're on the practice courts -- when, in fact, they're at 4-4 in the third set, with $20,000 on the line, thousands in the stands and points to defend. Dementieva is too rational for that. She knows what's up and that only makes the problem worse. Anyway, in the unlikely event she and Kournikova met in a final (nirvana for fans of double faults), you'd have to put your money on Dementieva. The power differential is negligible, but she has consistency from the backcourt that eludes Kournikova. Is Augustin Calleri ready to break out on the tour? He has an all-court game with excellent classic strokes off both wings, hits the ball a ton and moves very well. In his match with Tommy Haas last week, he was very competitive until the last set, where he lost consistency on some easy shots and fell apart.
I've been trumpeting Calleri since I first saw him at the 2000 French Open. I agree with your scouting report and would add that his game has a real easy-on-the-eyes elegance and efficiency. Alas, he hasn't really put it together with any sustained effort. He's shaping up to be a perfectly nice 40-60 player, but don't look for him in the second week of a Slam. I was reading last week's column and, once again, you brought up the idea of pro players calling their own lines. I understand that this works in college, but don't you think that the money involved in pro tennis would be too much for some players to resist impropriety? It seems to me that potential exists for a different type of player, who succeeds based on ability to shield a call from the chair ump and opponents.
Sure, there is a huge financial incentive to hook. Which makes the prospect of letting players call their own lines all the more compelling. Will Player X cheat on that close ball that he didn't see clearly? Or will he do the right thing? And how will Player Y react? Will she go ballistic or figure that there's some quasi-Zen, it-all-evens-out-in-the-end karmic justice? There's a little morality play in every point. (OK, maybe that's overstating it.) But one of the reasons we love this sport is for the different personalities. This would be yet another way to gain some real insight into a player's psychological makeup. (Besides, you could have an appeals judge who would safeguard against egregiously bad calls at 5-5 in the third-set tiebreak.) Why is tennis the only sport that allows linespeople/referees, etc., to wear logoed items? Is this ethical? What if one player is sponsored by the same company and the other by a different one or none at all? Would the officials favor the player who has the same sponsor as the tournament? Shouldn't events dispel any cause of potential impropriety and remove logos from the uniforms of judges, referees, linespeople?
Good question. I had never thought about it before, but I think you're right to raise ethical red flags. (Imagine an NBA ref wearing Nikes and making a crucial call against a Reebok player.) Problem is, free gear is one of the few perks accorded volunteers. And tournaments have enough expenses without having to outfit the staffs. Still, you raise an interesting point. What's the deal with Sandrine Testud? One day she's the No. 9 player in the world and the next she's missing from the tour. I haven't heard anything about her since Charleston. Is she injured or is she debating whether to throw in the towel?
She has indeed thrown in the towel. For a burp rag. Testud is pregnant -- I'm trying to finesse a Testud Baby joke, but it's not coming to me -- and has dropped off the tour. She will be missed. But not by the top players, against whom she always put up a good fight. I'm new to the Mailbag and really enjoy your top-five lists. After watching Paradorn Srichaphan over the weekend, I started wondering who the top five East Asian players of all time are (excluding American-born players like Michael Chang). I was a big fan of Shuzo Matsuoka in the '90s but he didn't do much.
Good question. But since you didn't specify gender, I'll take the easy way out and add Kimiko Date, Ai Sugiyama and Yayuk Basuki to the list and call it a day. If any of you have additions, fire away. I read an article in which Shaquille O'Neal's agent, Perry Rogers, was quoted. Is this the same Perry Rogers who was Andre Agassi's childhood friend and business manager/agent? If so, how did he go from working with a friend to representing such a high-profile client as Shaq? Does he still work with Andre and/or others?
Indeed it is. Rogers is often identified as Agassi's boyhood friend -- which he is -- but it's not as though he's a hanger-on (a "Bobo," as we say in NBA-speak). The guy went to Georgetown and Arizona law school, and friends of mine at Nike say he's as sharp an agent as they've dealt with. So his representing Shaquille O'Neal isn't such a surprise. FINALLY, the answers to some burning questions: Re: The Marcelo Rios biography. I think it's only in Spanish. It's called Marcelo Rios en la gloria y el reves, by Carolina Garcia Huidobro and Maria Olivia Browne, and it's available at this site for a mere $13 U.S. (but the shipping charges from Chile likely are steep).
Muchas gracias. Regarding the question as to whether any tennis players have ever been made fun of in Saturday Night Live skits, I can recall three references: Monica Seles was spoofed in a skit called "Life With Monica," in which Seles (played by Melanie Hutsell) was shown to grunt, in classic Seles form, at such mundane tasks as picking up a pencil, opening a refrigerator and popping open a can of Coke. Also, Tim Kazurinsky concluded, in some of his famous lists, that tennis players have "Bjorn Borg-asms" and get "Conjucti-Vitas Gerulaitis."
Thanks, Cheryl. A few of you cited that. Cory Wagener of Cincy also wrote: "There was a fairly funny parody of Anna Kournikova's lawsuit against Penthouse, starring Kirsten Dunst as Anna." Memo to both tours: Can we work our contacts and get a tennis player to host? For God's sake, they had Jonny Moseley (??) last season! By the way, where is Melanie Hutsell these days? For that matter, whither Victoria Jackson, Jan Hooks, Julia Sweeney, Nora Dunn, Ellen Cleghorne, the delightful Sarah Silverman, Mary Dunn, Cheri Oteri? With a few exceptions (Janeane Garafolo and Julia Louis-Dreyfus), being a female cast member on that show is like being a male tennis player who dates Martina Hingis. Fellow SNL junkies: Check out Tom Shales' forthcoming behind-the-scenes book, which Vanity Fair excerpted this month. (Dan Aykroyd slept with Gilda Radner? Who knew?) That's the news, and I am outta here. Enjoy the first week of the Open, everyone Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim covers tennis for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment. |
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