TENNIS:Jon Henderson
ACCORDING TO a remark attributed to no less an authority than her mother, Anna Kournikova is the future of tennis, which will be a source of hope to all those who have given up on the women’s game because of its cast of calamity-prone, one-dimensional “characters”.
Certainly there is growing evidence that there is another side to the maternally chaperoned, 15-year-old Muscovite from the one who can still answer questions – as she did mine last week – with an anodyne charm that suggests here is one more over-coached starlet who has left the gift of personality in its wrapping.
For a start, the moguls who know about these things have decided that she is perhaps the hottest investment in women’s sport. She has already attracted the not entirely selfless generosity of the International Management Group, Yonex rackets and Adidas, with whom she has a clothing contract.
Nor is she so anodyne as to have made a deep impression on the junior circuit simply as a player (she was the world No 1 in 1995); to many of her contemporaries, she has done so also as an egotistical pain in the neck. Her catwalk looks, which she readily presents to maximum effect, have not helped to foster a cosy relationship with some of her less strikingly endowed fellows, while, gossip has it, they have found favour with the NHL ice hockey star Sergei Federov.
Her American coach, Nick Bollettieri, has also been less than fulsome in his appraisal of this only child of devoted parents. “She has to learn to respect other players,” Bollettieri has said. “I’ve told her to remember that she is the new kid on the block. She has to learn to be humble.”
In one sense her lack of respect is palpable. In her first Grand Slam tournament last month, she reached the fourth round of the US Open, beating the seeded Barbara Paulus on the way, and in the European indoor championship last week she packed her bags only after confounding expectation by toppling the redoubtable South African Amanda Coetzer.
But she seemed genuinely surprised when, following her win over Coetzer, I asked her about Bollettieri’s assessment, which insinuated a disrespect beyond simply beating older players. “Did he really say that?” she replied. “I didn’t realise. If he thinks like that I have to listen, because I do recognise that respect for other players is important.”
Kournikova is on record, though, as having cast doubt on the commitment of young American players. “I’m not surprised we Europeans are doing better,” she said. “The Americans walk around with their noses in the air because they have such an easy time in training. We have to work harder and want it more.”
But Kournikova, who moved to the Bollettieri tennis academy in Florida with her mother, Alla, in 1992 is less keen to indulge in self-analysis beyond saying she foresees no danger that the destructive forces which so effectively ambushed Jennifer Capriati will surprise her. “At the moment I am enjoying my tennis and will only play the game as long as I’m having fun,” she said. “It’s important to realise that tennis is not the only thing in life.”
But if the player herself shed little light on her own growing legend as an outstanding prospect and member of the awkward squad, the British-based former Wimbledon runner-up Olga Morozova, whose husband was one of Kournikova’s first coaches, was more illuminating.
Morozova, an unashamed admirer of Kournikova, said: “She was always a big personality even when she was only six. She was the leader of the group. If there was one of the others who wanted to do something, it was always Anna who would go to my husband and tell him.
“I know she has got a little bit of a reputation on the junior circuit, but you know many of the things that have happened have not been her fault. For example, at the Orange Bowl [the unofficial junior world championships in Florida], where the matches are put on as the courts become available, I was with Anna once when she was asked to play on centre court. Apparently there was a German girl who was waiting to go on and the word got around that Anna was responsible for taking her place. But this was not the case. There are others who have an interest in pushing her into the spotlight. It is happening all the time.
`It is not right to say she doesn’t respect other players. She studies them and knows so much about them, all their scores, and she just wants so badly to beat them. I believe she has a very big future. She has a beautiful backhand, a good serve and her movement is fantastic. She goes for everything. The thing about her is that she has this little bit extra in everything she does and this disturbs people.”
Kournikova’s potential to disturb in a way other than being the daughter of a suspected tax evader on a grand scale (Graf), the victim of a deranged fan with a knife (Seles) or being driven to petty pilfering and drug abuse (Capriati) will come as some relief to the women’s tour.
They already have other young players pushing through with the ability to revive the battered fortunes of the tour, notably the 16-year-olds Martina Hingis of Switzerland and the great American hope Venus Williams. But it is Anna Kournikova, who says that if she hadn’t been a tennis player she would have been an actress, who is threatening to upstage them all.