Lindsay who?
No. 1 Davenport is still a tennis unknown by many
Posted: Friday January 22, 1999 07:35 PM
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Davenport: "Coming in here, I've been the best player, for sure, over the last five or six months." Gary M. Prior/Allsport |
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- Sometimes even grand slam champions are treated like weekend hackers.
Take the case of Lindsay Davenport, winner of the U.S. Open, Olympic gold medalist, No. 1 in the world, top seed in the Australian Open.
At the airport on the way to Melbourne from Sydney, where she beat Martina Hingis in the final of a tuneup tournament, she was stopped at the gate by a Qantas attendant.
"Your rackets are too big. You can't take them on the flight," the attendant said.
Davenport, who had just seen Hingis and Mary Joe Fernandez board with their racket bags packed, pleaded her case.
"You just let those people on," Davenport said.
"Well," the attendant responded, "Martina Hingis needs her rackets."
Taken aback by that inadvertent insult, Davenport felt the way Boris Becker once did when, as defending champion, he tried to go through the gold-tipped, black-iron gates of Wimbledon without his player's pass.
"But I am Becker," the three-time winner protested.
Becker didn't get in that day until he got his pass. And Davenport didn't get to stow all her rackets in the cabin of the Qantas flight, even flying first class.
Davenport realizes she hasn't quite achieved the fame of players like Hingis, Steffi Graf and Monica Seles. Which, in most cases, is just fine with her.
At 6-foot-2 1/2, Davenport stands out in a crowd, but she doesn't feel compelled to don disguises, like Seles, when she goes out in public.
"I'm still able to do things," she said, "although people come up to me a lot more now. But it hasn't been intrusive or anything yet."
That could change, of course, if Davenport keeps playing the way she has the past six months. She cruised into the round of 16 of the Australian Open on Friday with a 6-0, 6-4 victory in a rain-interrupted match against Karina Habsudova of Slovakia.
In three straight-set matches, Davenport has dropped a total of only 11 games, fewer than anyone else in the fourth round so far.
It is no surprise to Davenport, then, that she has now become the betting favorite over Hingis.
"Coming in here, I've been the best player, for sure, over the last five or six months," she said. "But it's an open field. Yeah, I'm the favorite, but it's not like you can count out Graf, Seles, Hingis. It's still an extremely difficult tournament."
Difficult, perhaps, but certainly with Davenport's reach to grab a second grand slam title, the $428,000 top prize, and the big silver and gold trophy.
Maybe then Qantas, an Australian Open sponsor, will allow Davenport to take her rackets aboard on the flight home.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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