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MELBOURNE, Australia -- The smile is back, and so are those
thunderous groundstrokes into the corners that leave echoes in the
air.
Nearly a decade after landing in her first major semifinals as a
precocious, smiling 14-year-old, Jennifer Capriati is in the
Australian Open semis and challenging for a Grand Slam title again.
|  | | The ball almost tore through Ai Sugiyama's racket strings during her loss to Jennifer Capriati. |
"Right now I believe I can go all the way," Capriati said.
"I've come this far, so I'm not going to think otherwise."
If there were any doubts that Capriati, at 23, is ready to
contend for major titles once more, she erased them Tuesday.
Not even a strained abdominal muscle, which caused her to take
an early injury timeout, slowed Capriati in a thorough 6-0, 6-2
thrashing of Ai Sugiyama, who had knocked off No. 4 Mary Pierce.
Capriati will face Lindsay Davenport, who "did everything I was supposed to" in a 6-1, 6-2
victory over No. 9 Julie Halard-Decugis.
Davenport hit nine aces and yielded only five points in her first six
service games before being broken for 5-2 in the second set. She
immediately broke Halard-Decugis at love for the match, ending with
a sharply angled backhand pass.
Davenport, who at 23 is the same age, said Capriati's comeback
"is one of the best stories that women's tennis has had. When I
was 13, she turned pro and she was one of my idols for about a year
because she did so well and I wasn't ever near that level when I
was 13 or 14."
In Thursday's semifinal, "if she was playing anyone else, I
would want her to win," said Davenport, who lost close semifinals
here in 1998 and 1999.
Capriati hadn't reached a Grand Slam semifinals since
Wimbledon and the U.S. in 1991, when she was almost universally
viewed as the future star of women's tennis.
But she fell in the quarterfinals of majors six times over the
next two years, then drifted out of the game and didn't return to
play the full Grand Slam circuit until last year, when she failed
to get past the fourth round.
This time, at a tournament where she had never gone past the
quarters, she showed that all her work in coming back, all the
practice sessions with coach Harold Solomon, all the counseling she
has undergone, have paid off.
Playing under the closed roof because of light showers, Capriati
crushed returns so consistently that Sugiyama managed to win only
four points on serve in the first set, which lasted just 24
minutes. Capriati kept pummeling groundstrokes down the lines to
race to a 4-0 lead in the second set before finally yielding on her
own serve.
After Sugiyama held serve for the first and only time, Capriati
closed out the match by holding serve easily and breaking Sugiyama
for the sixth time to win in 55 minutes.
"I really felt in a groove out there," said Capriati, who hit
16 winners to Sugiyama's one.
Capriati shrugged off the injury and said it won't hamper her in
the semis.
Capriati giggled when asked whether, one year ago, she would
have thought somebody predicting Tuesday's result was "smoking
something."
"No comment," she said, but then added: "A year ago, maybe
not; but a couple of years ago, yeah."
Was her 1998 goal getting back into the top 20?
"Fifty," said Capriati, who had dropped out of the tour after
losing in the first round in the 1993 U.S. Open.
She struggled through a period of personal problems, including
drugs, and didn't return to Grand Slams until 1996.
"I didn't accomplish everything that I wanted," said Capriati,
who was ranked as high as No. 6 between 1991 and 1993. "If I would
have stopped, it would have been a really short career. I thought I
had a lot more tennis left in me."
Coming back, she didn't get past a Grand Slam first round until
1998 Wimbledon, but last year reached the fourth round in the
French and U.S. Opens.
With her confidence growing, "I wanted to start this year just
keeping going forward, forward, forward," she said.
New coach Harold Solomon has helped.
"He said that he really believed could go all the way, even No.
1 maybe. I have a lot of respect for him and I think he knows a lot
about the game and knows what he's talking about. ... That just
right there lifted my confidence," she said.
In addition, "I've stopped thinking about what the world was
going to think of me. That's a big step in my progress."
She also drew encouragement from Agassi's resurgence.
"It just so happened that it was just at the same time that we
were both trying to make a comeback," she said. "He has been an
inspiration. I can't say I'm an inspiration for him because he just
got there before I did."
Agassi said, "I'm certainly pulling for her."
He said he had held doubts during his own comeback, and "I know
it's not easy. She has certainly shown a lot of perseverance and
strength of character. ... The results don't come right away, so
when they do start happening, it is a pleasure to be out there and
it's a pleasure to watch her."
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Agassi, Sampras set up semifinal duel
Notebook: Agassi full of good advice
Serena makes early exit in fourth round at Aussie Open
Sugiyama advances to Grand Slam quarterfinals for first time
Focused Capriati grinds out another victory
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