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An inhuman journey It's clear Capriati's past souring her views toward presentPosted: Monday July 01, 2002 7:20 PM
Jennifer Capriati will leave tennis with a complicated legacy. It’s a twisted tale of ambition, greed, decay, recovery and isolation. The good news is that, as much of the world knows, Capriati in the past two years has regained her zest for tennis, proving herself a fit and tenacious competitor. The foundation that was drilled into her as a child by such coaches as Jimmy Evert, Rick Macci and, yes, her father, Stefano, proved as unassailable as medieval armour. Capriati has a much sounder technical base to her game than either Venus or Serena Williams. What’s been sad throughout her entire pro career is that she’s never truly been treated like a human being. From the get-go, she was a commodity, at 13 treated with all the golden goose avarice of a start-up rapidly gone public. So eager was the WTA Tour to turn her into the next American icon (she turned pro the year after Chris Evert’s retirement) that she was simultaneously coddled and pressured. At the same age most kids are shuffling around for movie tickets, Capriati was told she was her family’s meal ticket. For reasons sensible and tragic, she rebelled. Was she tired of playing tennis? Was she mad at her parents for pushing her? Did she want to be around people who liked her for being a buddy instead of a revenue source? Sadly, we’ll never quite know. Capriati no doubt feels scalded by the fishbowl like exposure she got -- both as a young pro and as a tabloid subject. So reticent is she that she refused even to talk with ESPN when it wanted to interview her for a SportsCentury homage documentary. Tales fly of her castigating tour officials and intimidating her handlers. And we won’t belabor the woes of her Fed Cup interactions with Billie Jean King. Because she’s successful, she’s intimidating, and therefore, once again, Capriati’s not being treated like a human being: no one stands up to her, and when someone does, as King did, he or she is often left to twist in the wind while others assess the ways they can continue milking someone like Capriati. On the court, all this anger towards the tennis life surfaces in the way Capriati sprints through matches, most notably when she can barely settle herself to serve. Though her motion is reasonably sound, it’s so clear she’s in a rush just to get it over with and move on. It’s too bad. For all the thickets she’s been through, for all the ways her game has flowered in the last two years, Capriati should give herself -- and all of us -- a chance to stop and smell the roses.
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