Growing Pains Gone, Davenport Emerges at Top of Her Game

NEW YORK â€”  As the new slimmed-down, grown-up version of Lindsay Davenport worked her way maturely through a second-round match Wednesday at the U.S. Open, it was easy to be impressed.

In a sport that eats its young, Davenport has emerged with only a couple of bite marks.

She is 20 now, a resident of Newport Beach, and comfortable with her life outside the lines. She is also almost giddy about her recent success--her gold medal at the Olympics in Atlanta and, a few weeks later, a tournament victory at Manhattan Beach that included a semifinal triumph over Steffi Graf.

She is fun to watch, fun to interview, fun to be around. From an awkward ball banger, too heavy and slow to make it in prime time, she has become a player with both a game and a thought process. Her 6-0, 6-4 victory Wednesday over Slovakia’s Henrietta Nagyova, while taking only 49 minutes, became enough of a struggle in the second set to showcase the adult mind that now directs the still very young and tall body.

Davenport trailed in the second set, serving at 1-3 and love-40. This is what she said about her turnaround to win that game, and soon, the match:

“I still felt, even if I was down, 4-1, that I could win that set. That is probably a change in the way I think now.�

As Davenport worked her way through the match, it was also easy to think about Jennifer Capriati.

In a sport that eats its young, Capriati appears to have been gobbled up.

She is also 20, only three months older than Davenport. She also has an Olympic gold medal, from Barcelona in 1992. But if age is measured in things other than birth certificates, Capriati is lots older than Davenport. And, apparently, none the wiser for it.

Capriati walked off the stadium court here in 1993, after a first-round loss that stunned her as much as the tennis world, and has yet to come back. She tossed her rackets into a trash bin and went away to a world of controversy and trouble that included accusations of drug use and trouble with the law. Her story that has been written over and over again and has gone from profile to indictment.

Yes, she has played some tournaments, but it is not the real Jennifer Capriati out there, only a shell of her former self flailing away and putting on a brave face afterward. On the Grandstand court here Tuesday, she lost to somebody named Annabel Ellwood, 6-4, 6-4. Not too many years ago, Capriati would have chewed up and spit out Ellwood in 45 minutes.

Afterward, Capriati met the press, her least favorite thing in life, and professed, unconvincingly, that playing tennis is what she wants.

“I’m just getting back to the game I love,� she said. “It’s what I want to be doing. I’m not going to take it too seriously or anything, just have fun with it.�

Not too many years ago, Capriati was on top of the tennis world. She was its phenom. In 1991, when she was 15, she froze Martina Navratilova with a crucial backhand topspin lob that nicked the line and ousted the queen of Wimbledon. Capriati became one of the youngest semifinalists ever on those hallowed grounds of tennis. The next year, also at Wimbledon, she passed the $1-million mark in winnings.

Davenport didn’t play at Wimbledon until 1993 and had to scramble a bit to make the schedule for Wimbledon work in 1994, because she had placed, as her top priority, being at graduation with her friends at Murrieta Valley High. She passed the $1-million earnings mark in 1995, three years after Capriati.

Over the years, much has been made about the parental influence on Capriati. Her father, Stefano, handed her a racket when she was 3, and her mother, Denise, still in her 30s when Jennifer was wowing the tennis world as a 14-year-old, was always with her. Stefano was the coach, Denise the mom, travel agent and everything else, and younger brother Steven the tag-along. On the surface, it could have easily been “The Brady Bunch.�

But this Brady Bunch came apart a few years ago. After a family move from Florida to Palm Springs, Denise and Stefano split up--they are now divorced--and Jennifer moved out on her own for a while.

Now, Stefano still coaches her and Denise still gets to many matches. Despite the divorce, there seems to be no reduction in the level of parental love.

But any comparison of Davenport and Capriati brings to mind the statement made a few years ago by Pam Shriver, who was a teenage phenom herself years ago and who, besides having had a great career, also has great perspective on such things as parental handling of tennis youngsters.

“You know, I’ve never met Lindsay Davenport’s parents,� Shriver said. “And I love them for it.�

Davenport said the other day that her parents would be coming in to watch the U.S. Open later in the first week. Father Wink, the former U.S. Olympic volleyball player in 1968, and mother Ann, president of the Southern California Volleyball Assn., have been like that all along, letting their daughter have some teenage years along with the tennis, and letting their daughter travel and learn and grow up without them looking over her shoulder every step of the way.

It would seem that that is one way to do it, the Capriatis’ another way.

It would also seem that Wink and Ann will be quite proud, when they get here, to see their slimmed-down, grown-up daughter making her way quite nicely through the bottom half of the women’s singles draw, toward what appears to be a date with Monica Seles in the semifinals.