At their peaks, Jennifer Capriati and Lleyton Hewitt attracted all sorts of attention at every tournament. At this US Open, they are almost an afterthought.
That’s fine for the former number-one players and Grand Slam champions, especially while they are winning.
With Serena Williams’s outfits, Maria Sharapova’s aura, Lindsay Davenport’s 18-match winning streak and Justine Henin-Hardenne’s title defence, Capriati hasn’t gotten a lot of notice.
Same for Hewitt, mostly overlooked amid all the fuss about Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick and Roger Federer.
The fourth-seeded Australian Hewitt won his first-round match on Wednesday, defeating Wayne Ferreira of South Africa 6-1, 7-5, 6-4.
”There’s definitely been matches over the last few weeks that I feel like I’ve played as well as I’ve probably ever played,” Hewitt said.
”You know, that’s the good thing about tennis: you never are a perfect player, there’s always something you can work on,” he said.
”I still had little areas in my game that I could work on at that stage, even when I was number one and won here and Wimbledon.”
Capriati, a three-time Grand Slam winner but never past the semifinals at Flushing Meadows, moved into the third round by beating Magui Serna of Spain 6-0, 6-2.
”I mean, I’m a bit of a perfectionist, especially lately,” Capriati said. ”But realistically, probably, I am playing good enough.”
Williams had an easy match, as expected, in defeating fellow American Lindsay Lee-Waters 6-4, 6-3 in the second round.
Williams had a harder time getting her attire exactly right.
Before the match, she approached the chair umpire and wondered whether someone could retrieve her purse from the locker room. It seemed she had left her earrings behind.
”I consider myself an entertainer,” she said. ”I remember always thinking of myself as a broader picture as opposed to just your normal athlete. I don’t think I’ve ever been your normal athlete. I’ve always had something different going on in my life.”
After wearing a pleated denim skirt on Monday, Williams came back with something a little more catchy — black hot pants and a studded, tight tank top. She warmed up to the 1975 song You Sexy Thing.
”I represent all females out there who believe in themselves. It doesn’t matter what you look like; it’s all about having confidence,” she said.
Confidence is exactly what the United States’s Angela Haynes had as she upset 22nd-seeded Magdalena Maleeva of Bulgaria 6-2, 6-3 to reach the third round.
The 19-year-old Haynes grew up hitting tennis balls on the same courts in California where Serena and Venus Williams started.
”Everybody peaks at different times, so maybe I am a late bloomer,” Haynes said.
Haynes lost in the first round of last year’s Open, and got in this time as a wild card.
”I just asked,” she said.
Even if she loses to number 16 Italian Francesca Schiavone in the third round, she’s guaranteed to make $40 000.
”Here is the best place to win, get back to where I was and maybe better,” Haynes said. ”Definitely, it is my biggest win, but I can’t dwell on this match. I really have to stay focused here.”
Second-seeded Frenchwoman Amelie Mauresmo, the Olympic silver medallist, hung in to beat 105th-ranked Julia Vakulenko of Ukraine 3-6, 6-2, 6-2.
”I started very slow in the first set,” Mauresmo said. ”I’m looking forward to improve my game because I am not satisfied now.”
The top-seeded Federer rolled into the third round with a 6-2, 6-7 (4), 6-3, 6-1 victory over Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus.
Athens bronze medallists number 14 Fernando Gonzalez of Chile and Australian number 17 Alicia Molik both lost, and so did three-time French Open champion Gustavo Kuerten of Brazil. Mark Philippoussis of Australia, runner-up at the Open in 1998 and Wimbledon last year, quit with a hip injury in the fifth set against Russia’s Nikolay Davydenko.
Also winning was 23rd-seed American Vince Spadea, who beat Luis Horna of Peru 6-7 (3), 6-2, 6-4, 6-4.
Spadea went through a record 21-match losing streak in 2001 and vividly remembers sitting in a New York café wondering about his future.
”No friends, nothing to do, four days before September 11, feeling this dark cloud over me, just contemplating what is going to happen,” he said. ”I was living the good life, but I really didn’t have anything to say to anybody.
”I’d already bragged about my years before that. It was time for me to start fresh, have a passion again,” he said. — Sapa-AP