03 novembre 2004
FILADELFIA - Advanta Championships
VILLANOVA - Jennifer Capriati is one of the elder statesmen on this WTA circuit, having
turned pro in 1990 at the age of 14, and folks have now taken to asking her
if she's thought about retirement.
No, comes the answer. She hasn't. But make her play a few more matches
against Meghann Shaughnessy, and she'll probably start considering.
Capriati and Shaughnessy renewed their long - and seemingly heated - rivalry
on Wednesday afternoon at the Advanta Championships.
They went three intense sets, playing one game late in the second set that
must have lasted 20 minutes. And they supplied enough sweating and screaming
and whining and grimacing and racket-throwing - all in all, quality tennis
theater - to make these early rounds worthwhile.
So in that sense, it was typical for these two.
Although history paints a rather one-sided picture - Capriati's 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory here
made her 8-0 against Shaughnessy for her career - there's no doubt this pair
of Americans pushes each other.
"She will just take it up a notch [against me]," said Capriati, 28,
the WTA's ninth-ranked player and the Advanta's fourth seed. "... I
really think it pumps her up, and so in a way, it's a bad thing because she
wants to win so bad and I know that coming into the match."
Capriati also knew that she basically has to make it to Sunday's Advanta
final to qualify for the WTA Tour Championships next week in Los Angeles.
She further knew that she'd never lost to Shaughnessy before and, as she
said after the match, "I really just wanted to keep it that way."
Of course, Capriati knew that she hadn't played a match in more than two
months, sitting idle since the U.S. Open in late August.
All of which combined to make Wednesday's match, well...
"It was difficult out there," said Capriati, who complained about the new tennis
balls used for the match and had a few in-match grievances with the line
judges. "I was just fighting really hard, and on indoor [courts,
Shaughnessy]'s a tough opponent because obviously her serve is huge.
But when you play somebody so much, you can kind of just predict a
little bit where they're going to go."
Shaughnessy, 25, had played in nearly twice as many tournaments (22) as
Capriati (12) this year and took advantage of her opponents' rust in winning
the first set. But, true to form, Shaughnessy had trouble closing the deal
against her old nemesis.
She clearly agonized over each point, yelping at times in frustration and
once tossing her racket high into the air after an unforced error. In her
post-match press conference, she bristled when reporters repeatedly brought
up her 0-8 record against Capriati, saying, "Does anyone else want to remind
me one more time?"
"It's just been a similar story," she said of her losses to Capriati. "I've
lost in three sets quite a few times, and in the end, she goes a little bit
more aggressive and that's the difference. That's what happened again today."
Capriati is aggressively pursuing a bid to the Tour Championships. She's
10th in the points standings, battling Vera Zvonareva (11th) and Venus (ninth)
and Serena Williams (eighth) for one of the two remaining spots in the
tournament's eight-player field.
After her long, post-U.S. Open break, during which she did "a whole lot of
nothing," Capriati showed Wednesday that she's ready for a fight here at the Advanta.
The race for next week's tournament "is very close, and I don't want to
just give it away," she said, "so I'm really, really trying to do my best."
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