Eleanor Preston tennis
Things move quickly in tennis. No sooner had we got used to the idea of world domination by the Williams sisters, the rejuvenation of Jennifer Capriati and the ever-present threat of Martina Hingis than a whole new crop of players emerges into the women’s game.
While the story of Capriati a veteran at the age of 24 and her resurgence to win her first grand slam grabbed the headlines at this year’s Australian Open, the event also saw the up-and-coming Belgians Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin and their fellow teenager Daja Bedanova of the Czech Republic begin to deliver on their potential.
Their joint progress to the last 16 offering a reminder to the established hierarchy that there are players who are faster, hungrier and perhaps better creeping up behind.
Clijsters, now 17, announced herself to the world 18 months ago by being the only woman to come close to derailing Serena Williams’s run to the 1999 United States Open title. Clijsters pushed the seemingly unstoppable Williams to three sets in the third round at Flushing Meadows and has not really looked back.
She did the same thing at last year’s US Open, almost accounting for Lindsay Davenport in the second round. In Melbourne, however, Davenport saw the young Belgian coming and sent her packing far more convincingly in the last 16.
However, had Clijsters who was seeded 15th in Australia not been caught up in the hype surrounding her boyfriend Lleyton Hewitt at his home grand slam, she might have gone further. Far be it from anyone to argue with a teenager in love but long evenings spent watching Hewitt toiling away were hardly the ideal big-match preparation.
Henin is an even more exciting prospect. Small and wiry, with mousy hair and a mousier manner off court, Henin is hardly anyone’s idea of a powerhouse. Yet the 18-year-old started this year like a rocket, winning back-to-back titles on the Gold Coast and in Canberra and accumulating a 13-match winning streak before running into Monica Seles in the fourth round in Melbourne.
Seles, who is hardly known for tapping the ball when a maximum-velocity whack will do, needed three tough sets to stop Henin’s relentless, attacking tennis and still looked exhausted by the experience when she lost to Capriati in the quarterfinals.
Bedanova, who grew up in the Czech Republic trading shots with Hingis, was the surprise package of the women’s draw. The 17-year-old knocked out another old adversary from her junior days, the number nine seed Elena Dementieva, in the third round and, although she was overwhelmed by Serena Williams in her next match, she did enough to suggest that the world may soon have to learn how to pronounce her name properly. For the record, according to the women’s tour, it is Die-ya Bed-ann-yoh-vah.
Jelena Dokic also had a memorable tournament but, as usual with Dokic, it was for the wrong reasons. Her decision, under the influence of her temperamental father Damir, to turn her back on her adopted home of Australia and, for immediate tennis purposes, to reclaim her Yugoslavian nationality caused a media furore and meant she played her first match under her new flag to the sound of booing.
A local fracas involving her father and a female TV reporter did not help, nor did his insistence that Tennis Australia had rigged the draw to give Dokic a difficult opening match against Davenport.
It is hard to believe Dokic is still only 17, given the icy maturity she showed under trying circumstances, and she reminded people, by pushing Davenport to three sets, that behind all the fuss and the family problems there is an immensely talented player trying to get out.
Perhaps wisely, Dokic cut her losses from what must have been a nightmare fortnight for her, pulling out of the mixed doubles event, where she was playing with the Yugoslavian Nenad Zimonjic, before the semi- finals, citing a back injury.
The Dokic family have now gone to Florida to begin their exile. However, as long as daughter remains under father’s influence both on and off the court, a doubt remains over her ability to deliver on all her undoubted promise.