June, 18th 2001
Roland Garros
It was all going to be so easy. That's what everyone thought back when
Jennifer Capriati was young and fresh. Championships seemed inevitable for
the Fort Lauderdale schoolgirl, a Chris Evert wannabe who learned the game
from Evert's dad, Jimmy, and pounded the hardest ground strokes anyone had
seen. She collected wins like Barbie dolls, popping her gum and grinning. In
1990, at age 14, Capriati became the youngest girl ever to be ranked in the
top 10, and she cruised into the French Open semifinals, becoming the
youngest to advance so far at a Grand Slam tournament. She was going to be
the next big American thing. Everyone said so.
Endorsements, magazine covers: All the treasures of the modern age were laid
at Capriati's feet. No one bothered to ask if any of it was good for her.
For what no one knew about Capriati then -- what no one really would know
until 4:58 p.m., Paris time, last Saturday -- was that at her core, she
needs a fight. Capriati responds best to adversity, not ease. So on Saturday,
at the tennis-old age of 25, Capriati, the onetime troubled teen who in the
last two years has clawed her way back to the top, again buried herself in a
hole from which to clamber out. After a first set in which she demonstrated
little more than frayed nerves, the heavily favored and fourth-ranked
Capriati righted herself, engaged No. 12 seed Kim Clijsters in a mesmerizing
final set and, with a 1-6, 6-4, 12-10 victory in the French Open final,
fulfilled the promise she had shown on this same court more than a decade ago.
Then, after becoming the first American woman since Evert in 1986 to win in
Paris, Capriati walked up to the podium to find Evert herself waiting to
present the trophy. "I never thought I'd be standing here 11 years later,
after playing my first time here when I was 14 years old," Capriati told
the crowd. "Really, I'm just waiting to wake up from this dream."
Don't pinch her yet. After answering her own doubts about her fortitude with
a three-set quarterfinal win over Serena Williams and then rolling over No.
1 Martina Hingis in the semifinals, Capriati emerged as the most focused
force in the women's game. Better yet, with her title runs at Roland Garros
and, before that, at the Australian Open -- the first Aussie-French double
since Monica Seles achieved it in 1992 -- Capriati has become a threat to
complete the game's first Grand Slam since Steffi Graf's in 1988. Of the
four Slam surfaces, the slow red clay of Roland Garros presented the
stiffest challenge to Capriati's high-octane game. She'll enter the speedy
precincts of Wimbledon as the favorite, and the hard courts at the U.S. Open
are her best surface. "I think she'll win one [more] Grand Slam [event] for
sure," Clijsters said.
That this is the buzz hovering about Capriati is astounding. Back in her
darkest days, in 1994, she declared herself to be self-loathing and suicidal.
The difference between Capriati then and now is the difference between Girl,
Interrupted and Sleeping Beauty. On her first Wednesday at Roland Garros
this year, Capriati smiled wistfully and announced a Disneyfied desire "to
find my Prince Charming."
That took the tour's most unpredictable Grand Slam event in a new direction.
Love was in the air. By the time the fortnight had ended, TV screens were
saturated with shots of Jennifer's divorced parents, Denise and Stefano,
sitting side by side and hugging after her wins. Men's champion Gustavo
Kuerten, who on Sunday won his third French Open, with a 6-7, 7-5, 6-2, 6-0
victory over Alex Corretja, conjured up the tournament's most apt image.
After surviving a match point to win a fourth-round marathon against
qualifier Michael Russell, he used his racket to carve a heart -- a
valentine to the French fans --in the clay of Court Phillippe Chatrier, then
kneeled and blew two kisses. Following the final he took it one step further,
carving another heart and stretching out inside it.
Kuerten joins greats Bjorn Borg, Ivan Lendl and Mats Wilander, the only
other men to have won at least three French titles in the Open era. Kuerten
arrived in Paris with a 24-3 record on clay in 2001, and his romps over
former champ Yevgeny Kafelnikov in the quarterfinals and the fast-rising
Juan Carlos Ferrero in the semis gave pause only because of their mastery.
But it was Capriati's victory, and her run over the last two years, that
told a tale of things larger than tennis. "What she did is an example for
everybody," Stefano said. "All families have [problems], but with love you
can always come back."
Well, with love, hard work and Capriati's embrace of a challenge. She
battled a bad reputation, being cited for shoplifting in 1993 and arrested
for marijuana possession in '94, and she entered drug rehab soon afterward.
She lost lucrative endorsement deals and, in 1995, suffered through her
parents' divorce. Over the last year Capriati has seen her mother stricken
with thyroid cancer, skin cancer and recurring hip ailments that forced
Denise to skip the Australian Open and undergo hip-replacement surgery.
During the recovery Jennifer was always there, holding up Denise in the
shower, helping her dress, keeping her spirits high. "I couldn't do the
things I wanted to do," says Denise, "and at times you go on a pity party
and say, 'I don't have any more energy.' Jennifer would hear none of it. 'Mom,'
she would say, 'we've fought bigger battles than this.'"
By the time she hit Paris, Jennifer had the drill down. Accompanied by her
21-year-old brother, Steven, as well as Denise and Stefano, Jennifer did no
sightseeing and kept telling her mother, "Only the strong survive."
On the morning of the final Jennifer turned to Steven and said, "Time to
do what we came here to do."
After a dismal first set against Clijsters, Capriati willed herself back
into the match, snapping to herself, "Start over again!" Every time things
seemed to be leaning her way, however, Capriati squandered the opportunity.
Three times in the third set she served for the match, but Clijsters, 18 and
playing in her first Grand Slam final, pressed with crushing forehands and
indefatigable retrieving. Four times in the final set Clijsters came within
two points of the match, and it was then that Capriati revealed her mettle.
"I was fighting till the end," she said.
The first time, serving at 5-6, 30-all, Capriati outmuscled Clijsters in a
21-stroke rally. Twice more with her back to the wall, Capriati hit heavy
ground strokes that forced Clijsters into errors, and the fourth time, at
7-8, deuce, Capriati shook off two net cords and fired a service winner. Six
games later, on Capriati's second match point, as Clijsters sagged, she
whipped the ball past the Belgian teenager with a forehand. Capriati then
hopped three times and clenched her hands over her head as if she were the
heavyweight champ.
Who could argue that she wasn't? Even Hingis conceded last week, after
losing to Capriati for the third straight time, that she had been supplanted.
"Jennifer's hot, and she sees the opportunity this year with everyone's
being injured," Hingis said. "She's on top of the game."
That Hingis, of all people, finds herself overwhelmed by Capriati's
determination is stunning. It was the 14-year-old Hingis who arrived in 1995
as the anti-Capriati, a precociously talented player who handled the game,
the pressure and the minefield of being coached by a parent (her mother,
Melanie Molitor) with little angst. She won five Grand Slam singles titles
from 1997 to '99. However, just as Capriati has come into her own, Hingis
has hit a wall. She's finding adulthood far harder to negotiate than adolescence.
Hingis, who hasn't won a Grand Slam event in more than two years, hadn't
prepared herself to win in Paris. The week before the tournament, while
Capriati was practicing on clay in Monte Carlo and leaving Steven -- a
member of the tennis team at Arizona -- gasping after 20 minutes of her
fiery workouts, Hingis was practicing on the cushioned hard-court surface at
her home in Trubbach, Switzerland. Why? "I don't have a clay court in front
of my house," she explained lamely.
The heart of her game has been nothing if not unstable. Hingis declared
independence from her mother in late March, then reversed course after a few
weeks and asked Molitor back as her coach in Paris. Hingis got a big break
when, down 1-4 in the first set of the semifinal, Capriati felt a twinge in
her right knee and took treatment from the tour trainer. With Capriati
momentarily slowed, Hingis evened things at 4-4 but failed to convert two
break points and lost all spirit. Capriati easily broke Hingis to win the
first set and then ground her into powder.
None of the top players fears Hingis now. After the match her mother sat at
a rain-soaked table outside the players' lounge, smiling vaguely. "Martina
cannot play," Molitor said. "Jennifer did more for her tennis in the last
few weeks than Martina and played very good. Martina didn't."
For Capriati, though, tennis is one thing, stardom another. She never had
the crossover dreams of Anna Kournikova and the Williams sisters. "She'd be
perfectly content with going home after this and watching TV in her bedroom
or on the couch or playing with her dogs, Happy and Aries," says Steven. "That'd
make her as happy as going on a million-dollar shopping spree in Paris."
Capriati still regards the media as the monster that once devoured her and
her family. The night before the French final she worried that another Grand
Slam title would bring a level of hype she hadn't imagined. "It was
pretty quiet after [the Australian Open]," she said following her win on
Saturday. "After this one it might get pretty crazy. But I think I've got
a good head on my shoulders."
Capriati came to Paris more confident than ever. Rather than mumble and
stare at the tablecloth during her press conferences, as had been her habit,
she made eye contact with reporters and, most tellingly, tossed away most of
the "you knows" that had propped up her conversation like so many crutches.
She emphasized that she is finally at peace, that she likes the person she
sees in the mirror. For the first time, she realizes that fame can be a
positive force. Before her quarterfinal showdown against Serena Williams,
Capriati strode to the net and held up a sign that read GET WELL SOON,
CORINA, for Corina Morariu, a doubles specialist who is battling leukemia.
After the final Capriati dedicated her championship to Morariu, gave the
crowd a composed speech and congratulated her opponent. She seemed perfectly
comfortable. "It's just my happiness talking," she said.
This is the Capriati everyone has waited for since she first came to Paris
as a pro 11 years ago. She's an adult now, bruised and wary, but at times
you can still see a hint of the 14-year-old who captivated America. When the
crowd at Court Phillippe Chatrier did the wave before she served the last
time for the championship, Capriati stared in openmouthed wonder at the
sight of so many grown-ups acting like kids. Her mother, too, sometimes can
see the five-year-old who had no idea she'd won her first match and grinned
so widely at the news. "I love that smile," Denise said. "She can just light
up a room when she smiles."
She did it again on Saturday. After she clenched her hands over her head as
the cheers rained down, that smile swept over Capriati's face, and she lit
up the biggest room in Paris. It came to her so easily that you'd swear it
took no work at all.
This is the Capriati everyone has waited for since she first came to Paris
as a pro 11 years ago.
Kuerten joins Borg, Lendl and Wilander, the only other men to have won at
least three French titles in the Open era.
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