Capriati Wins Struggle Within

Every so often, the movie “Hilary and Jackie” is shown on cable TV--and, for those who haven’t seen it, the film has nothing to do with former first ladies Hillary Clinton or Jackie Kennedy.

It contains no mentions of tennis, either. But one scene of cellist Jacqueline Du Pre and her love-hate relationship with the instrument reminded me of a certain female tennis player. Jackie tried to abandon the cello, leaving it outside in the snow on a balcony or in a cab. The cello, almost magically, reappears at her side.

Jennifer Capriati once tried to abandon the instrument of her trade, the tennis racket. As the story goes, she once threw it in a trash bin after a tough loss in New York. She left the racket behind--for months at a time--and it kept finding its way back to her.

“It’s not really my career, it’s my life,” Capriati said. “To me, it’s been the case, it’s not your ordinary career. There’s so much other stuff. So it’s almost everything combined together.

“It is career, it’s life.”

The self-awareness session was not long after her marathon victory over Kim Clijsters of Belgium in the French Open final Saturday. An exhausted Capriati was shoehorned into a small WTA office, talking to a few American reporters, trying to look back and glance ahead.

Drained from the match, she was trying to stay awake and she made the group laugh with her openness.

“I haven’t had the chance to even step in the shower,” Capriati said.

The last two women to win the first two legs of tennis’ Grand Slam--Monica Seles in 1992 and Steffi Graf in 1988--aren’t quite as earthy. Capriati, unwittingly, had the media laughing earlier when asked about her reaction when she double-faulted on her first match point against Serena Williams in the quarterfinals.

She used an unprintable expression, saying: “Oh, . . . .”

Certainly, Capriati is no Seles, Graf or Chris Evert clone, which is obvious, as she heads to Wimbledon with half a Slam after winning the Australian and the French. The next Evert is the first Capriati, despite the early links to the Evert family. The sports world became aware of her natural ability as far back as her early lessons as a 6-year-old with Jimmy Evert in Florida.

When she was 12, she was beating the best juniors in the country. She came to Southern California for the now-defunct Seventeen magazine junior tournament at Mission Viejo and giggled about playing and beating teenagers, telling The Times: “I know they still want to bite my head off.”

Chris Evert was her idol. Capriati wore a bracelet Evert gave her and was supposed to be the carbon copy of the All-American baseliner. The carbon copy started to smudge and blur a couple of years after she became the youngest Grand Slam semifinalist at 14 when she reached the final four at the 1990 French Open.

Arrests for shoplifting in 1993 and drug possession in 1994 emptied the bandwagon in a hurry. Every so often, the racket would reappear in her hand again and Capriati would dust it off and push through a first-round loss at a Grand Slam.

“I was surprised when she decided, ‘This is it,’ ” said her mother, Denise. “She was going to give it her best shot. We did talk about looking back--with her having this talent--and not regretting it.”

The transformation from a slacker to Slam winner started in 1999. Mind and body matured, and once Capriati started having success, she was much better equipped to deal with it. Pretenders were identified more easily and if it meant turning down particular opportunities, she had no problem saying no.

“I definitely have gotten used to that--the red lights go off now,” she said. “And I’ve had to learn that sometimes I don’t trust enough people. I’d rather do it that way than trust too much and get burned.

“It was definitely a big struggle, the struggle was always within yourself. Whatever people say about you, if you don’t make it a struggle within yourself, it doesn’t matter.”

Capriati had to become comfortable with herself first. At 25, she couldn’t let others’ opinions completely influence her.

“What people think of me is not what I should think of myself,” she said. “It’s a lot of trial and error. You just have to go through and learn it.”

After one of her many media sessions, Capriati gave a couple of her rackets to an Italian sportswriter. She had hit with his son once and promised to give him a special racket.

Not to worry, like the reappearing cello, there are plenty more rackets in Capriati’s life.