Nannie de Villiers was a late starter at tennis, but she’s quickly catching up with the mini-prodigies
WIMBLEDON: Paul Martin
QUESTION: When was the last time a South African held up a Wimbledon winners’ trophy? Answer: last Sunday. Nannie de Villiers, a bubbly 17-year-old from Somerset West won the girls doubles title, alongside England’s Miss E Jelfs.
It has been 13 years since any South African raised the All England Club’s silverware. Then, it was Frew McMillan, in the mixed doubles (with Betty Stove), prior to which the doubles genius had won the men’s event alongside Bob Hewitt on three occasions, 1978, 1972 and 1967.
Nor is it unique for a South African to win a Wimbledon junior event. Three girls (including Ilana Kloss in 1972) and three boys (the last being Byron Bertram in 1969 and 1970) have garnered the singles titles since the events were introduced shortly after World War II, but surprisingly never in the girls’ or boys’ doubles.
No sooner had she made her mark at Wimbledon than De Villiers lashed out at the newest teeny-bopper mini-prodigies, and also took a swipe at the already much-maligned South African tennis authorities.
As a player De Villiers has been a late developer, and has faced considerable difficulties in getting herself taken seriously. Even her father, a medical doctor who still plays for Boland Seniors and had been a a Stellenbosch tennis blue, failed to diagnose her talents until she was 14, a stage of life by which in this precocious age the likes of Jennifer Capriati, Gabriela Sabatini and Tracy Austin were already close to megastardom.
Dad had until then, according to De Villiers, concentrated his coaching efforts on her elder sister Elke, leaving Nannie to “play the pushing game” with her shorter-hitting mother. It has hence taken a conscious effort by De Villiers to develop more attacking strokes and net-play, but this she has now done to telling effect.
Her successful doubles partnership came about by chance: the two girls had become pen-friends after they had met at Wimbledon last year and decided, by correspondence, to join forces this year. They will team up again for the US Open junior doubles. De Villiers’ real ambition, though, is to succeed in singles: doubles is relaxing, but singles is the business, she declared after her Wimbledon victory. “It’ll make me the money one day.”
There is more than a touch of resentment from De Villiers in the pampering of and hype surrounding two 13-year-olds at Wimbledon this year. “Quite frankly, it makes me sick,” she confessed. “When I played Anna Kournikova, there were four television cameras and 12 still photographers. Her father was screaming advice in Russian, and her coach, Nick Bollettieri, was given a warning for coaching. She was also warned for racket abuse. And she was making those terrible screeching noises every time she hit the ball. Losing to her really hurt. She’s younger than my little sister!”
To De Villiers’ credit, the loss was a narrow one, but the gap in earnings potential and fame seems enormous. Super- agent Mark McCormack signed her up when the Russian was nine, and saw to it that she moved to the US and the Bollettieri tennis hothouse. Her huge tennis bag is weighed down not just by rackets but also by fat endorsements and contracts, no doubt ably packaged by the beaming McCormack, also present courtside.
To accept that Kournikova, and the ultimate singles winner, Martina Hingis, are the future of the women’s game, makes the purists’ stomachs more than a little queasy. Kournikova _ on her spindly tanned legs, with her bouncing pigtail and her rapidly-developing American drawl, her incessant chatter to her doubles partner, her snappy demands for rapid service from ballboys twice her height and width, and above all her “ee-oo-aah” shriek loud enough to outgun the absent Monica Seles _ is a miniature monster, a potential McEnroe-in-the- making.
Hingis, a slightly more muscular product of a Swiss father and a Croatian mother, displayed some irascibility in winning her singles title on Sunday, dropping her racket in disgust more than once and glaring at lines-women.
No such arrogance from De Villiers, though a slight touch of vanity: she “hates” her real name, Esme, because she associates it with a “Boland tannie”. She does, though, carry a few grudges. She feels she has been ignored by the South African tennis establishment. “They don’t recognise my talents, I suppose because I live in the Cape,” she claimed.
She is annoyed that the impoverished Tennis South Africa paid for plane tickets for two other juniors, Pretoria’s Surina de Beer and Natal’s Damien Roberts, while her own fares and travel costs are met by her parents. “It makes me mad,” she says.
She finds life on the junior tennis circuit “pretty tough. Other girls travel with coaches. For me it’s difficult to practise, to get around, to get balls, to confirm flights, to book hotels. I’d love some privileges.”
Apart from the unaccustomed pleasure of being driven off in a Wimbledon limousine to change for the Champions’ Dinner at the Savoy last Sunday night, just after their doubles match, life on the circuit will continue to be no bed of roses.
However De Villiers does have one big privilege to look forward to. Next week she will be going to the wilds of Namibia, and will join the men hunting gemsbok and springbok. “Until now they’ve never actually let me shoot. But as a Wimbledon champion,” she giggled, “that’s a prize I’m going to insist on.”