Davenport Is Showing the Gossips She’s a Big Girl and Can Take It

A boy grows up big, he’s praised. A girl grows up big, she’s pitied.

Despite the advancements society has made in the recognition of women as athletes, we still cheer loudest not for the ones who look like athletes, but the ones who look like models.

Little gymnasts. Pretty figure skaters. Spandexed tennis players.

It’s misguided and unfair, but it’s us, and it won’t change until somebody with charisma and courage shakes hard enough to knock away the blindness.

Lindsay Davenport might not know it, but she is that somebody.

And that time may be now.

She’s nearly 6 feet 3, weighs 175 pounds after losing 25, actually admits to liking beef stroganoff, and was previously known to some fellow tennis pros as “the dump truck.”

And she’s my favorite. Nobody close.

In a world of griping and posing and pettiness. Southern California’s Lindsay Davenport is reality.

A reality that, incidentally, is ranked second in the world and has a chance to be No. 1 before the end of the year.

The top-ranked player? You might have heard of Martina Hingis. She recently posed for the cover of GQ magazine in a slinky dress accompanied by the caption, “The Champ is a Vamp.”

Davenport? A London tabloid once ran her head shot next to a photo of Meat Loaf so readers could compare the two.

All her life, she has heard it, the whispers heard by any not-so-little girl who understands quickly that this gender-equity business has not quite made it to the front lines of the school playground.

Oh, look at her, that poor thing. So big-boned, such a big girl.

Worried officials at a 12-and-under tournament once demanded to see her birth certificate. And she was 10 at the time.

At a news conference before the 1996 Olympics--during which she won her breakthrough championship--she was not asked one question.

Yeah, just look at her. Davenport won her seventh consecutive match Saturday, defeating Monica Seles in three sets in the semifinals of the Toshiba Tennis Classic here, and could take her second consecutive tournament championship today with a win over Mary Pierce.

This week, she will be playing in front of one of the few groups of fans--the hometown folk at the Acura Classic in Manhattan Beach--who actually make her a favorite--and then it’s on to the U.S. Open and perhaps her best chance yet at a first Grand Slam title.

Yeah, just look at her. She’s like, normal.

Her eyes dance when she talks, which is about everything and anything. She is honest to a fault, admitting she used to be heavy, ate too much fast food, and suffered from a lack of self-esteem.

With a childhood that spanned from Palos Verdes to Murrieta to Newport Beach--where she lives now with her mother--the 22-year-old has been a tortoise in a hare’s world.

But look who’s winning.

“I’ve been playing some great tennis,” she said. “Just because I’m not on magazine covers isn’t really affecting me, and not affecting my play, either.”

Take Saturday, against Seles, whom time has transformed from a p weekly favorite to a sentimental underdog.

Until the final two games of the final set, which Davenport won, 7-5, it was as if the La Costa Resort crowd was actually rooting for Davenport to miss.

On the points that mattered, she didn’t. In the stretch, with Seles grunting and diving and inspiring, Davenport calmly returned shot after shot until Seles would finally break.

“She won the one or two points that made a difference,” Seles said, later noting that Grand Slam winners do just that.

And like all of us, Davenport worried about some of the stuff that made no difference.

Such as when, midway through the match, Seles unbelievably conceded an ace that a line judge had apparently incorrectly ruled out.

Davenport said she appreciated the gesture, then worried about it.

“I kept thinking, ‘OK, I’ve got to give it back to her,’ ” Davenport said. “But all her aces were called in.”

Then there was Seles’ sore back, which bothered Seles throughout the match. Most opponents would say they never even thought about that, worried that to even mention an opponent’s problems would lessen their triumph.

Not Davenport.

“I’m thinking, ‘I’m sure she has a bad back,’ ” Davenport recalled with a smile. “Then it was like, ‘Maybe it’s not so bad.’ ”

Seles said Davenport’s charm is simple.

“She’s a balanced person,” she said. “She’s had a normal life. She’s not just tennis, tennis, tennis. You can talk to her about other things.”

Talk to her about going to a regular high school (Murrieta Valley), which many young stars don’t do. Talk to her about not dating much during high school, which most young stars would never admit.

Even talk to her about life after tennis. She said earlier this summer she wants to be a--gasp--regular mom.

“Who drives her kids everywhere,” she said.

But not just yet, OK? Wondrously big Lindsay Davenport still has some serious shaking to do.