Davenport Waltzes Past Hingis

On a bright sunny Saturday at the Australian Open, Lindsay Davenport graduated from nice person/great tennis player to future Hall of Famer.

That may be a lot to put on the back of a 23-year-old, but then, when you have already won your third Grand Slam event title, and have literally swatted around the No. 1 player in the world to stake your claim for No. 1, the future can only look rosy.

In fact, if the future is anything like the present, specifically the women’s singles final, where Davenport knocked out Martina Hingis in a little more than an hour, 6-1, 7-5, this Hall of Fame stuff will be automatic.

Davenport has grown up from the hard courts of Palos Verdes, to her high school graduation from Murrieta Valley in 1994 only days before she left for Wimbledon, to current Newport Beach resident and best women’s player in the world.

Yes, of course, Hingis remains No. 1 ranked. But that’s a computer talking.

The real measure of the moment, and of recent life and times on the women’s tour, was seen on center court at Rod Laver Arena, where a full house of 10,021 witnessed a whipping that was whittled to a defeat when Hingis, to her credit, battled back for the sake of respect.

Only 44 minutes into the match, Davenport, seeded No. 2, led Hingis, 6-1, 5-1. Two minutes later, she was two points from the match.

Suddenly, Davenport tightened.

“It’s the hardest thing to do,” she said, “closing out a match like that.”

And Hingis stopped missing, making only one error until she got it back even at 5-5.

“I kept looking at the clock,” she said. “I thought, oh, my God, people had to pay to see this match. This is like the No. 1 and No. 2 players in the world, so it should be a closer match or something. I just didn’t feel like I was that bad.”

The most surprising thing at this stage was not that Hingis rallied, but the manner in which Davenport handled the rally.

“When it got back to 5-5, I was fine,” she said. “I never thought I was going to lose the second set. You can’t let it bother you. You play it point by point. You don’t think of any negatives.”

Oh, yes. If you are Davenport, you do think of one. You think of the 1996 French Open. Quarterfinals. Iva Majoli. Up a set and 4-1, 40-love. And you lose.

“That was the most important thing that ever happened in my life,” Davenport said. “It took me a very long time to recover from that.”

Davenport spent much of the aftermath figuring out what had happened, and what it would take to make sure it never happened again.

Part of the solution was hiring Robert Van’t Hof as her coach. Van’t Hof lived down the street in Newport Beach, had a good journeyman’s career on the men’s tour and had the kind of calming personality that many recommended to Davenport. In January ‘1996, Van’t Hof was hired. Exactly four years later, Davenport has titles from the ’98 U.S. Open, the ’99 Wimbledon and now the 2000 Australian.

Indeed, she is one title away, the French, from becoming the third person to have won all four Grand Slam titles and an Olympic gold medal. Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi, Olympic gold winners in 1988 and 1996, respectively, are the others. Davenport won the women’s gold the same year Agassi got his in Atlanta.

She also may share another honor with Agassi, should he win today’s men’s singles title. That would mean that, for the first time since 1938, when Dodo Chaney and the recently deceased Don Budge did it, there be American-born Australian Open champions in men’s and women’s singles.

Not only did Van’t Hof direct Davenport into Grand Slam-title contention at each stop, he got her to a level of consistency that got her a short stint at No. 1, starting back in the late fall of 1998. And, if anything, she appears headed back there again, especially since the player wearing the crown is fairly intimidated just facing Davenport, to whom Hingis has now lost four in a row.

“Lindsay is just no compromise [sic],” said Hingis, who was denied her fourth consecutive Australian title. “You get a shorter ball. Bang. Boom. There. It is like line, line. Against other players, I would be a little short or something happens, not such a great return. But she’s like, no compromise. She kills you right away. No mistakes, not today.”

Unlike so many players who wear their emotions on the sleeves, Davenport’s body language never changed from 5-1 to 5-5. She took the service line in that 11th game of the set, looking like the Hingis comeback had been merely a nuisance. In the seats, Van’t Hof nodded, quietly, like they had prepared for this.

Davenport lost the first point, then hit a backhand winner down the line that she said later was exactly the kind of shot she had needed to bring her total confidence back. She served it at at 40-15, then eyed the Hingis across the net as she prepared to serve at 5-6. Hingis has said everything but the exact word about her matches with Davenport. That word is “intimidated.”

Hingis’ first serve was nowhere near and her second settled gently into the net at 72 miles an hour. On the next point, Hingis approached and missed a nervous volley wide, then Davenport hit the baseline with the next shot and had three match points.

All the fight was gone from Hingis now. The weakest part of her game, her serve, missed badly on the first and drifted in at 69 miles an hour on the second. Davenport returned deep and Hingis shanked a backhand 10 feet long.

Game, set, match. New queen of women’s tennis, no matter what the computer says.

Afterward, Davenport, proving that, not only can nice girls finish first, they can also continue to be nice while they are winning. She answered every qiuestion of every interviewer, and cooperated with every person who asked her to.

And then, much later, in the quiet of a basement hallway, she was asked if she really had any idea how good she had become.

She laughed, said no, and added, “I always have the fear that this all could end any day.”

It was a very human moment for somebody certain to be immortalized in bronze 10 or 15 years from now, in a hall in Rhode Island. For Davenport, it will be an easy trip: from Newport Beach to Newport.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

No. 2 KAFELNIKOV vs. No. 1 AGASSI

7 tonight, ESPN

HEAD TO HEAD

Andre Agassi has won five of nine matches against Yevgeny Kafelnikov and two of the three Grand Slam matches:

1999 U.S. OPEN

Agassi wins semifinal: 1-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3

1995 FRENCH OPEN

Kafelnikov wins quarterfinal: 6-4, 6-3, 7-5

1995 AUSTRALIAN OPEN

Agassi wins quarterfinal: 6-2, 7-5, 6-0