Even Capriati Finds It Tough to Explain Rally

Whether it was breaking down in tears after a quarterfinal loss to Gabriela Sabatini in 1992 or doing the same after losing in the first round to Jolene Watanabe five years later, the Australian Open has long tested the emotions of Jennifer Capriati.

The loss to Sabatini set off a public display of teen rebellion. Capriati was supposed to play an event in Tokyo, skipped it and returned home. The loss to Watanabe under tricky windy conditions was especially tough because Capriati had nearly defeated Martina Hingis the week before in Sydney.

This time, it ended in tears and cheers for Capriati in the Australian Open final. She out-hit Hingis in a superb display of power and poise in a 6-4, 6-3 victory. From watching the 63-minute final, it seemed as though Capriati was the one who had won here three times, not Hingis.

Never mind this was a player who had never appeared in a Grand Slam final. As recently as late 1998, she needed to qualify for smaller events. Even Capriati, 24, was not able to clearly define what kept her going after disappointments in Australia and everywhere else.

“Sometimes, it’s just what you’ve got to do,” she said. “You can’t try and find explanations, you can’t find reasons. You’ve just got to do what’s in your instinct, in your nature, keep going and trust that eventually you will be rewarded.

“You don’t know why, you just keep doing it and hopefully it will pay off somewhere.”

Shortly after the final, Capriati smiled after being asked when she thought she could win this tournament. “Today,” she said, laughing.

She beat the top two players in the world, Hingis and Lindsay Davenport, to take the championship and did not lose a set in either match.

“Nobody would have really thought I would walk away with a Grand Slam,” said Capriati, who will be ranked No. 7 in the world this week. “That’s really putting the icing on the cake of comebacks. I’ve been back, anyway, before this.”

There has always been a deep reserve of support from the public. Capriati did not want to talk about the past in detail, declining to use the moment as a confessional. But she knows what kind of motivation she represents to teenagers battling drug problems.

“I get so many letters, just fan mail from people,” Capriati said. “Even somebody has actually written, not quite a book, but just a really long, long letter. It was just amazing people can think like this and have the heart to write something like that to me and be pulling for me like that.

“I’m aware of it. That’s what I want. That’s what I had hoped for out of all this. The determination to come back and try to achieve this again and make this comeback, is just for those people.

“I’m a pretty critical person of myself. It’s hard to give credit to myself. But I guess that’s just being humble too. I just want to remain humble.”