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Former tennis prodigy Jennifer Capriati

2019-08-30T09:31:27.390Z


Currently, 15-year-old Cori Gauff is the big tennis promise. Jennifer Capriati was two years younger when she won tournaments and the world fell in love with her. But the prodigy was not prepared for that.



There is a picture of Jennifer Capriati, taken less than a year ago, she is standing on a tennis court and smiles. She is wearing a blue silk blouse, Petra Kvitova and Elina Svitolina are posing next to her, holding their thugs. But Capriati has her hands free, one has put them on the edge of the net.

It is the last public image of Capriati on a tennis court. It's one of the last pictures ever made of the now 43-year-old. Capriati and the public, that fits - if it ever was ever different - for a long time no longer together. It's like blue silk blouse and tennis court. Goes, but quickly becomes uncomfortable.

In October 2018, the former prodigy lost as ambassador of the Women's Tennis Association WTA during the finals before the duel Kvitova against Svitolina at the edge of the net. In the question and answer session, she says, "I'm happy to be here, it's great to come back and see everyone again, as well as experience the active players, I'm so happy!" After that, the world does not hear from her again for months. A brief flicker, no comments on her life today. "So much became public, but I think all of us like to have a private life."

Matthew Stockman / Getty Images

On the side of Petra Kvitova (left) and Elina Svitolina: Jennifer Capriati in October 2018

Capriati has been a member of the Tennis Hall of Fame since 2012. However, she is only really present when a teenage girl causes a furor, as did 15-year-old Cori Gauff at Wimbledon. Then the historical comparisons are drawn with the Capriati from New York, which at the time was titled the "Eighth Wonders of the World", and who prominently made it into the major US newspapers before reaching the final at the age of thirteen at their first professional tournament.

It was not surprising when Capriati even at the sight of the huge hype around her person said: "I think the media are a little out of control." It was followed by successful years, French Open semi-final with 14, top ten in the same year, many more records. Then: Olympic Gold 1992 in the final of Barcelona against the great Steffi Graf. Capriati is 16. Can a young person control such a development?

Capriati attended a tennis camp at the age of nine, and Paul Fein cites the official assessment of the hopeful in his book Tennis Confidential. It's a kind of foreboding, everything is still under control. "It has a lot of potential and should be set up carefully, fun must be in the foreground, be careful and do not push the development too fast." Seven years later Capriati says after a lost match against Gabriela Sabatini at the Australian Open: "It's putting a lot of pressure on me, maybe because everything is now very serious."

AP Photo / Michel Lipchitz

With 16 years Olympic champion: Jennifer Capriati (left) beats Steffi Graf in the final of Barcelona in 1992

It is never a joke for her parents and especially her father Stefano. Jennifer finds herself at the age of ten with her mother, who wants to work on her figure on the tennis court again. She learns to crawl there, always behind the felt ball. Her father, Stuntman from Brindisi, Italy, puts a pillow under her back and lets her do situps, so she's still a baby. With three she has her first real racket in her hand, with five she gets lessons from the father of US tennis legend Chris Evert. Her family moves to Fort Lauderdale for her daughter's career - Jennifer is still in kindergarten at the time.

Capriati is not prepared for media attention

Later, the move follows directly into a tennis resort in Saddlebrook, Florida. At the age of twelve Jennifer Capriati outclasses also clearly older competitors, the father pushes the tour on a waiver. Only with 14 to the professionals? Too late, he finds. "She's such a happy girl, she just wants to play tennis," says Stefano Capriati. A little later she plays at 13 in Boca Raton, Florida, her first professional tournament, all major media outlets report locally. Capriati signs their first sponsorship deal. Your reward: five million US dollars.

The US tennis craves for a successor of Chris Evert. Exhausted from the search and inspired by the belief that they have finally found what they are looking for, the tennis world is pulling the talent off the court with the help of their parents - and putting them on a throne. On the court, near the edge of the net, the "Dream-Teen" ("Sports Illustrated") turns into a "killer" according to ex-coach Rick Macci. However, the further away the net is, the more it loses control. The media attention, the sponsors, the pressure - Capriati is not prepared for it.

photo gallery


16 pictures

Jennifer Capriati: With 16 Olympic champion, with 18 under arrest

The "New York Times" says Capriati in 1994: "I felt the way I played and when I played bad I said I can live with it, but in truth I could not. nobody likes me."

Tennis was everything. And without success, nothing. In August 1993, she returns to the tennis court after a first-round defeat at the US Open. A few months later she is arrested for shoplifting, the ring she steals costs $ 15. It is the beginning of a long tabloid career. Although she furiously returns to the tennis court, she wins three Grand Slams in 2001 and 2002. But the successes are more entertaining than the crashes. In 2004 she plays her last professional match at the age of 28. The sporting story, so auspiciously started, ends in Philadelphia with a 0: 6, 1: 6 against Vera Zvonareva.

"But without tennis, who am I then?"

The story of Jennifer Capriati, however, continues. In the mid-1990s, she was arrested for marijuana possession, followed by drug therapies, rumors of eating disorders, depression, reports of suicide attempts. In 2013, she lists an ex-lover for stalking, inter alia, speaks of a hundred calls in one day, there is an out-of-court settlement.

Capriati tries for a while with Twitter, it is 2016 and she is persistent, especially about Hillary Clinton, the then US presidential candidate. In return, she repeatedly pays homage to her father, who died in 2015.

Once she writes, "We have no control over what others do, we can only control what we believe and think, and how much you want to allow someone to hurt you."

But even these times of sparkling insights into the psychic life of the former tennis wonder are over. Capriati is said to live in a sophisticated residential complex on Singer Island, Florida, overlooking the private beach. She is silent and lets interviews from earlier speak for themselves. In 2007, she said in the New York Daily News, "Tennis has given my life a structure, but without tennis, who am I, sometimes it feels like a demon, deep down I feel awful." The edge of the net, which gives support, is very far away at this time.

The picture from October 2018, it supposedly tells of a better time now.

Source: spiegel

All sports articles on 2019-08-30

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