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Too much, too soon? Young WTA stars continue to battle career stress
Posted: Wednesday January 19, 2000 12:00 AM
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- An old demon that haunts women's tennis is back: are young players up to the myriad pressures of international competition, and what should adults do about it? Australia's tennis chief said Wednesday he would consider more help for teen players after two outbursts, one demeaning and the other accusatory, by local star Jelena Dokic after her first-round loss in the Australian Open. "It's tough for a 16-year-old in the context of losing a match in a Grand Slam she would have expected to have won and she's overreacted to it," said Geoff Pollard, head of Tennis Australia. The list of teenage starlets who wilt, even if temporarily, under the pressures swirling around world-class tennis stretches back as long as they have dominated women's tennis. The most famous is Dokic's doubles partner in Melbourne, 23-year-old Jennifer Capriati, who suffered a career collapse in 1993 and subsequent arrests on shoplifting and drug possession charges. She has since embarked on a comeback, trains with world No. 1 Martina Hingis in Florida and beat No. 14 seeded Dominique Van Roost in three sets Wednesday to reach the third round. Anna Kournikova, 18, has yet to win a tournament, though she's been hyped as a future champion for years. The career of Mirjana Lucic, 17, has stalled since she turned pro early. Lucic got a restraining order to keep away her overbearing father after the U.S. Open in 1998. Mary Pierce, too, received a restraining order against her father after he allegedly hit her and her mother and was banned from tournaments for causing disturbances. Hingis, 19, buckled emotionally at the 1999 French Open and lost to Dokic in the first round of Wimbledon during a brief breakup with her mother and coach. Dokic, who reached the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, was shaken when Rita Kuti Kis on Monday denied her another shot at glory. Graceless in defeat, Dokic showed up late at a post-match news conference, for which she was fined $2,500, and dismissed Kuti Kis as a player without a future. On Tuesday, she accused tennis officials of intentionally saddling her with tough draws. Dokic rose from virtual anonymity a year ago to a high of No. 37. She came into the Australian Open ranked No. 39. "They say they pull them out [of a random draw] but I don't think so," the Yugoslav-born Australian citizen said of the system of assigning names in a draw. Many players were incredulous at the remark. Said No. 2 seded Lindsay Davenport: "That's some of the dumbest stuff I have ever heard." Dokic also said her father Damir, who was escorted out of a tournament at Birmingham, England, last year for loud, drunken cheering, told her there was pressure on her "because of where we come from." On Wednesday, Damir Dokic grabbed a radio-microphone from an Australian camera crew that was following his family outside a Melbourne hotel and returned it later after police intervened. The Dokic family emigrated from Serbia and lived in poverty until Jelena began making money playing tennis. Being the breadwinner of the family may add to the pressure. "A lot of it has come from not having made the progress from Wimbledon she would have liked," Pollard said. "Maybe she thought this would be the next jump she would make and it didn't happen." He said he would talk to Dokic, whose tournament appearances are limited by age restrictions, and that Australian officials would assess how to help players from different ethnic backgrounds. "It's a complicated issue with their schooling, and liaising with them and their parents," he said. Part of Dokic's problem, officials believe, is that she has no full-time coach. Australian Davis Cup coach Tony Roche works with her at Grand Slam events. Kournikova, who is 18 years old and ranked No. 12 in the world, understands what Dokic is enduring. "Definitely, it's hard for her. I know, I've been there," she said. "It's obviously very tough when you lose in your own country in the first round and everybody has expectations of you being the one here."
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