Reality Is About to Hit Hingis

Martina Hingis has been run off the court in her last two matches. First by the bigger, stronger, faster Steffi Graf in the final of the French Open, then by the bigger, stronger, faster Jelena Dokic in a stunning first-round upset at Wimbledon.

And there it is.

While much can be made of Hingis’ petulance and cockiness, about how embarrassing was her meltdown at the French Open, about her ill-considered comments regarding other players, the truth is that Hingis may be finding out that the game has passed her by.

And how can that be said about an 18-year-old who is ranked No. 2 in the world? How is it that the player who dominated the sport two years ago, who won three of the four Grand Slam events in 1997, who won 37 consecutive matches at one point in 1997, who seemed destined to own the game with her soft hands, light touch and innate court sense, has seemed so lost on the court and unable to handle losing off it?

“I really believe that the game has changed so much in those two years,” Graf says. “The game has changed with girls who are tall and physical and who have that extra power. That is where the tennis is going and it is going to be very hard for Martina to keep [up] to that level.”

The game is changing. Every day. It is belonging more and more to players like Dokic and Mirjana Lucic, two 6-foot-plus teenagers. It already belongs to the Williams sisters, Venus, 6-2, and her 5-10 sister Serena. It belongs most of all right now to the 6-2 Lindsay Davenport, who realized how the game was changing two years ago when she decided it was unacceptable to be slow and out of shape. She lost 30 pounds and now can get to many more balls and then whack the cover off them.

In real life Hingis is normal-sized, 5-7. In tennis life, she is becoming a midget. And most difficult for Hingis to accept, it seems, is that her place in the tennis world is not the same as it was in 1997. Her place in the tennis world has become normal-sized too.

In Hingis’ world, she never loses to the same person twice and a tantrum thrown on Court Central during the final of the French Open two months ago is forgotten, gone forever from consciousness. In the world of Hingis, she has not been on vacation at all during the last four weeks, even though photos were taken of her and a boyfriend on Cyprus. No, in the world of Hingis, the 18-year-old has been working out like a maniac and practicing tennis all day every day.

We were reintroduced to Hingis on Monday. The teenager formerly known as the best player in the world was modeling her new Adidas warmup and shoes and being welcomed by her new sponsor, Adidas, to the stable of Adidas athletes, and the people who run Adidas are so very, very proud to have added Hingis to their family of athletes.

Perhaps Adidas can run out a new line of crying towels for the tennis player who weeps in an incontrollable fit of pique after a loss, brought on partly because of her own arrogance in refusing to recognize the singular will and athletic ability of her opponent. That’s what happened to Hingis at the French Open when she wept in disbelief and anger over her loss to Graf, the player she had dismissed two years ago as over the hill, in the championship match.

Two weeks later, Hingis bombed out in the first round of Wimbledon, a 6-2, 6-0 loser to Dokic, the hard-hitting Australian teenager who rumbled into the quarterfinals. After that, Hingis, who played at Wimbledon for the first time in her five-year pro career without her mother, Melanie Molitor, at her side, went away.

And now she’s back, ready to play at the TIG Classic here at La Costa, where 17 of the top 20 players in the world are in the draw and where Hingis is seeded No. 2.

About her possible opponent in the second round, Chanda Rubin, Hingis dismissed the possibility of losing, saying, “Everybody knows I don’t lose to somebody twice.” Since Rubin has already beaten Hingis this year, we got the point. She wasn’t worried.

Molitor is back. She sits in the front row of the news conference, not a muscle in her face moving. It was Molitor who forced her daughter back onto the court at the French Open, to watch Graf accept the champion’s trophy. Her absence from Wimbledon was not a big deal, Molitor said, simply part of the normal tensions between a mother and her teenage daughter. And, she added, her daughter would have been unprofessional to have skipped the French Open awards ceremony.

But then Hingis says that while she watched Wimbledon after her loss, she was thinking, “What the hell is going on? I’m supposed to be there,” and it is clear that what the mother needs to tell the daughter is, basically, “No you don’t. You don’t just belong. You must win and to win you must work hard. Every day.”

What Hingis did in 1997 was take advantage of a WTA tour in flux. Graf missed most of the season because of injuries and Monica Seles was struggling with the ultimately fatal illness of her father. Davenport and the Williams sisters were just beginning to develop their physical and mental toughness to go along with their height and strength.

At Wimbledon, Dokic and Lucic, who made it to the semifinals, and Alexandra Stevenson, another over 6-footer and another surprise semifinalist, seemed to be on the verge of challenging for Grand Slam titles and top-10 rankings.

They just keep coming, young and tall, strong and fast. And the game will keep moving, getting faster and stronger and better every day. Hingis will always have 1997 in her mind. That’s not enough in 1999.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.