Who's That Girl?

The WTA tour is desperately seeking a new star to embody its ideal of strength, attitude and sex appeal. Meet Simonya Popova

By L. Jon Wertheim

Issue date: September 2, 2002

Simonya Popova is hot. Smoking. Close to it, anyway. It's a preposterously humid August afternoon in Bradenton, Fla., and Popova is on a back court at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy, midway through a series of practice sets. Strikingly attractive, her skin and hair colored by the sun, Popova is dripping sweat like a busted faucet. Her opponent, a toned and tanned academy instructor who claims to have played in the Davis Cup for Peru, is panting. "Never hot like this in Tashkent," says Simonya's father, Sergei, looking on from his usual perch behind the court. "This worse than Cairo."

While Kournikova hasn't raised her game to match her looks, the powerful Popova (above) looks to be a dazzling success. Photo illustration by James Porto

Not that it bothers his daughter much. Popova, 17, has broken the instructor's service and is serving for the set at 5-3. With murderous intent she whacks a backhand winner and then a forehand winner to go up 30-love. A 125-mph serve down the T rockets past the Peruvian for 40-love. On the next point he chips a return and charges the net. Showing court craft to match her power, Popova unfurls a topspin lob that traces a perfect arc and nicks the baseline. "More accurate than ICBM," says Sergei, smiling at his daughter. "How you beat her? I cannot say, because I do not know."

This week and next the women's game will be all the rage at the U.S. Open. Yet perhaps the best female tennis player on the planet won't be in the draw. At age 15 Popova won the prestigious Orange Bowl junior tournament without dropping a set. But Sergei, a self-described disciple of Richard Williams, was wary of throwing his daughter into the fast, peripatetic life of a full-time touring pro. (He also knew that if her mystique were allowed to grow, it would spark a bidding war among companies seeking to sponsor her.) So he has forbidden her to turn pro until she reaches 18 this fall. With nothing left to achieve in junior tennis, she has spent the past three years practicing, mostly against men who couldn't quite cut it on tour. "My dad thought if I went pro at 16, I'd burn out like Jennifer Capriati," says Popova in flawless English. "The way you burn out is by practicing all day and never playing matches that count for anything. I can't wait to be on the WTA tour."

And the WTA tour can't wait to have her. As women's sports go, tennis reigns supreme. The players have infiltrated the public consciousness to such a degree that they're known by their first names: Venus, Serena, Anna, Martina, Jennifer, Lindsay, Monica. The TV ratings for women's matches routinely surpass the men's -- at Wimbledon the women's doubles final outdrew the men's singles final. At the U.S. Open, tournament organizers and CBS execs are so sure that the women will upstage the men that the women's final is scheduled for prime time on Saturday, Sept. 7, while the men play the following afternoon. This is to say nothing of the women's unquantifiable buzz. "We are in a golden age," says WTA tour CEO Kevin Wulff.

Yet this Belle Epoque may be gilded with fool's gold. Financially, women's tennis isn't nearly as hot as most people think it is; in fact, it might be in trouble. There's a nagging sense that the WTA has failed to capitalize on an impossibly colorful cast of characters, and now the window of opportunity is closing fast.

Consider: Sanex, the European skin-care provider, is rinsing out as the tour's title sponsor, and no replacement is in sight. The WTA has never been able to cobble together a meaningful television package -- the coverage is sporadic and impossible for casual fans to follow -- and recently Eurosport, a major broadcast partner of the tour's, began agitating for a new deal with more favorable terms. A sexy 1998 agreement with Regency Enterprises, which Business Week estimated would bring the tour $120 million, has turned out to be essentially worthless. (Regency bought worldwide television rights to the WTA Tour, hoping to capitalize on the glamour of the players, but there were scant takers.)

Women's tennis certainly appeals to corporate America, but companies ranging from Wrigley to Avon to American Express are investing in a few choice players -- not in the WTA as an institution. The Williams sisters, for instance, will earn more this year (from Puma, Reebok, Wrigley, Avon and Nortel, among others) than the tour grosses. Meanwhile, at WTA events in North America attendance declined from 1,812,367 in 2000 to 1,769,195 in 2001, while at men's pro events it increased from 1,984,645 to 2,216,727. Overall, attendance at men's tournaments grew 2.6% more than at women's.

If the women's game is at a crossroads, it's also because of what's happening on the court. Not long ago a half-dozen players were credible candidates to win major titles. Today there are only two: Venus and Serena Williams. Barring a colossal upset, the Williams sisters will make the U.S. Open final a family affair, just as they did the 2002 French Open and Wimbledon finals. Their rise from the courts of Compton, Calif., to the game's elite might still be the most inspirational story in sports, but as their tennis has ascended to new heights, the rest of the field has vaporized.

Capriati, whose inexplicably sour demeanor is fast frittering away the goodwill she amassed during her comeback, has beaten neither Serena nor Venus in more than a year. Lindsay Davenport and Martina Hingis, both former No. 1's, have just returned from injuries, and the Williams juggernaut seems to have blunted their motivation. Monica Seles is a saint of a human being and a sentimental favorite in any tournament, but she's down to her last few clicks as a player. Anna Kournikova remains a tennis player manqué. And Top 10 mainstay Amélie Mauresmo of France has said that the Williamses are so dominant that she has set her sights on being No. 3. "Someone needs to step up and mount a challenge," says former pro Pam Shriver, now a broadcaster.

That someone might well be Popova. At 6'1" she has the height that's become a requirement for success in the women's game. And at nearly 160 pounds of sinewy muscle she's capable of generating plenty of power. She also deploys her pace-laced shots with the consistency of a ball machine. Though her natural habitat is the baseline, she is that rarest breed, a female with both the ability and the confidence to play serve-and-volley tennis. "If there's a weakness, I sure didn't see it," says veteran U.S. pro Corina Morariu, who practiced with Popova in Florida. "There's just an unbelievable amount of talent there."

What's more, Popova has charisma to match her game. For the past few years, in a Faustian bargain, the WTA and various management groups have reaped short-term gains from hyping the players' sex appeal. Kournikova was the most obvious example, but other stars like Hingis and even the religious Williams sisters were happy to vamp. Recently, however, the tour has been backed into a corner as more and more players have made it clear that they want to be perceived only as athletes. "We're playing a great game and doing it very well," says Martina Navratilova. "We've gone away from the sex-appeal thing."

Take Daniela Hantuchova, 19, a tall, blonde Slovak who is closing in on the top 10 and is being pushed to fill what tour insiders refer to as the "Anna vacuum." One veteran tour staffer refers to Hantuchova as the Bratislava Babe and eagerly notes that her 44-inch legs are the longest in the history of women's tennis. Problem is, Hantuchova, awkwardly cast as a sex symbol, wants none of it. "I'm concentrating on my tennis," she says. "I don't need the other things."

Nor, apparently, does 17-year-old Ashley Harkleroad, who's been hailed as the American Anna. Harkleroad caused a minor stir at last year's U.S. Open when, with Nike's encouragement, she violated all the laws of physics by squeezing her body into a skirt and tank top that were several sizes too small. (Not coincidentally, several days later tournament schedulers put her match in Arthur Ashe Stadium.) This year she is insisting that any outfit she wears on court first be approved by her mother.

Elena Dementieva, another blonde Russian, was expected to follow in Kournikova's tracks, but she too has demurred. "I don't like the show-business side of tennis," Dementieva says.

Same for No. 4-ranked Jelena Dokic of Yugoslavia. Earlier this summer she was approached about a photo shoot by GQ, which had done earlier layouts with Hingis (cover line: the champ is a vamp) and Kournikova (headline: from russia with, um ... lob?). To the tour's dismay Dokic declined, preferring to spend time on the practice court. Dokic also stands sentry over her private life. Recently asked by a journalist about her romance with Formula One driver Enrique Bernoldi, she responded, "Why don't you think of a question that is your business, and you can ask me that." This attitude is anathema to a tour that rose to prominence by promoting its players as glamorous cultural curiosities rather than as athletes.

Just how desperate is the tour to keep the focus on style over substance? Earlier this summer the WTA ran a series of ads in USA Today promoting its summer tournaments. An illustration of a curvaceous player was accompanied by pro-wrestling-style tag lines, including, "I'm your worst nightmare: a bitch in a headband." A number of players were so incensed that, through their agents, they demanded that the tag line be removed, which it was. "It's as if they want to portray us as being catty," says one top player. "I guess controversy sells, but for most of us, it's not our nature."

Fortunately for the WTA, Popova has pulchritude and attitude in equal measure. Her midriff-baring outfits, so small they appear to come from Gap Kids, highlight her ample décolletage. She has already agreed to pose for the tour's annual swimsuit calendar. When she turns pro, an image consultant hired by her agent will travel with her.

"Simonya is to marketability what John McEnroe is to self-promotion," says her agent, Max Eisenbud. "We're talking off the charts."

Better still, unlike the Williams sisters, who have become increasingly opaque figures, reluctant to let down their guards for an instant, Popova is a beacon of candor. "I have no secrets," she says. "I'm like Hingis when she started out. I'll say anything." Indeed, with only a modicum of baiting, she is inclined to, well, Popov on a variety of subjects. "If women's tennis is all that, how come we still make, like, 40 percent less than the men at events outside the Grand Slams?" she asks. "Did you know that 26 men have won more than $500,000 this year, but only 12 women have?" And don't get her started on Kournikova. "I hear Anna wants to write a biography, but can you publish a book if you don't have a title?" she says. "Seriously, Anna's nice. It's just that she's, like, so jumped the shark."

Kournikova did, however, write the career blueprint that Popova -- and dozens of other young players from the former Soviet Union -- have followed. In the late '70s and early '80s, her parents, Sergei and Raisa, both gym teachers in Tashkent, were so poor that they went weeks eating nothing but borscht. After their fourth son was born, Raisa vowed that her fecund days were over. "She was going to get tubal litigation, or whatever you call it," volunteers Simonya. Raisa didn't, and Simonya was born on Oct. 22, 1984.

By age eight it was clear that she had preternatural hand-eye coordination and a one-in-a-billion aptitude for hitting a tennis ball. Given her skill, her physique and a face that could launch a thousand endorsements, Popova was nicknamed Predopredelena (the Destined) by Uzbekistan Tennis Federation officials. Two years later she was delivered to IMG, the Cleveland-based management behemoth. The whole Popov family left Tashkent for a three-bedroom condo, provided free of charge, at the IMG-owned Bollettieri Academy. ("From one gulag to another," jokes Sergei.) Simonya began taking classes at the academy and was soon speaking fluent English. (She now quotes Lil' Romeo and Romeo Montague with equal proficiency.) Her tennis flourished. Says Bollettieri, one hardly given to overstatement, "The first time I saw Sim, I thought of Flo-Jo: the speed, the grace, the determination. I said to myself, Nick, you got a world Number 1 on your hands."

Though she is still two months removed from her professional debut, Popova is hip to the realpolitik of the WTA tour. Like many stars, she has already made a fuss about wearing the tour's sponsor patch on her shirt, lest it reduce the value of her apparel deal. Popova has also let it be known that, like Kournikova, she won't lodge at designated tournament hotels. She'll take a suite, preferably at a Ritz, though an Inter-Continental will do. ("And not one of those add-a-desk-and-call-it-a-junior suites," she adds. "I'm talking the claw-foot tub, the polished rocks in the ashtrays, all that stuff.") With IMG's behind-the-scenes finagling, she has been guaranteed that she won't have to play her first match at tournaments until Wednesday, something of a status symbol among top players.

Time, of course, will tell if Popova's abundance of confidence is justified. But with skills to compete with the Williams sisters and a celebrity force field to rival Kournikova's, Popova is precisely the player longed for by a tour that's losing its mojo.

If only she existed.

Issue date: September 2, 2002