Tennis: The comeback kid overpowers Hingis

7:45 AM By PHIL BROWN

MELBOURNE - To the top players who wished her well in her comeback but possibly took her lightly, Jennifer Capriati had a reply – shock them early and keep pounding winners.

She did it to defending champion Lindsay Davenport in the semi final, jumping to a 3–0 lead on her way to the title showdown.

Then she did it more emphatically against three–time winner Martina Hingis, racing to 4–0 in 12 minutes and winning the Australian Open title 6–4, 6–3 yesterday.

On her first match point, after 63 minutes of play, she slammed a backhand serve return.

"It was a winner down the line," she said, "but it was just the slowest winner. It just kept going.

"As soon as I saw that it was clean, I had done it, the reality just hit me. 'Oh my God.' I just jumped for joy. I couldn't believe it just really happened."

It was the 24–year–old Capriati's first championship in a Grand Slam tournament, and came five years after she began a comeback in earnest from the setbacks of drug and personal problems.

In her child prodigy years, she never went beyond the semifinals at a Grand Slam event, although she won the Olympic gold medal as a 16–year–old in 1992, beating Steffi Graf in the final.

"That seems like another life," she said. "This is a new life, a different life."

Capriati was past considering her progress a comeback as she moved up the rankings in recent years. Although she went from Wimbledon 1993 to Wimbledon 1998 without winning any match in a Grand Slam, at last year's Australian Open she reached her first Grand Slam semi final in nine years, losing to eventual winner Davenport.

Still, as the No. 12 seed, she was a longshot this time. The only unseeded champ in the Open era was Chris O'Neil, who won the Australian Open in 1978. Iva Majoli, who won the 1997 French Open, previously was the lowest seeded women's Grand Slam champion at ninth.

"Maybe they're taking me lightly," Capriati said of her last two matches here. Hingis, ranked No. 1 on the tour, had won all five of their previous matches. Davenport, No. 2, was 5–1 against her before their semi final.

The key, she added, was to "start real well and jump on top of my opponents."

She broke Hingis in the first game, winning the last three points with a running forehand down the line, a backhand down the line, and a quick recovery from trouble that led to an eventual miss by Hingis.

The 20–year–old Hingis, who has lost only two of her last 35 matches at the Australian Open, threw down and kicked her racket after a service winner by Capriati in the second set's second game.

She denied later, however, that she had considered the title hers after beating first Serena Williams and then her sister, Venus, in the quarter– and semifinals. She never had beaten both sisters before in a single tournament.

"I knew I had to face a great player out there, otherwise she wouldn't have beaten Monica (Seles) and Lindsay here," Hingis said.

The problem, she added, "was just maybe one Williams too many."

After beating Venus Williams 6–1, 6–1 Thursday, she and Seles lost to the eventual championship–winning Williams sisters in the doubles semi finals.

"I was dead after that," Hingis said. "Just mentally, I didn't have it any more to go out there again and fight for every point."

Although she has not added to her collection of five Grand Slam titles since winning the 1999 Australian, Hingis said, "I think there are worse disasters in life than what happened to me today. I can still smile. I'm healthy. I have more opportunities to come."

Hingis did manage to fight back from 1–5 to 4–5 before Capriati served out the first set, sprinting all out on set point to return a Hingis drop shot and stopping just short of illegally touching the net.

After the first set, she said, "my confidence was just riding so high, so I just kept it going."

"We love you, Jen," one man among the 15,000 spectators shouted during her victory speech.

"I love you guys," she responded.

"Who would've thought I would have ever made it here after so much has happened?" Capriati told the supportive center–court crowd. "Dreams do come true if you keep believing in yourself. Anything can happen."

Asked later how she might respond to a Hollywood offer for her life story, she said, "If I were to do something like that, I would never sell it for anything. I don't know. For now, no. Who knows down the road in the future, but of course only on my terms."

After the handshake at the net, Capriati thrust her hands in the air and trotted over to her father and coach, Stefano. Reaching down from the stands, he blew a kiss and rubbed her right arm. Then she went back to her changeover chair and phoned her brother back home in Florida.

"I know the steel of my daughter. ... She won the Olympics. She had the desire and the will. ... She lost it for a while but now it's in her and I hope it lasts a long time," he said.

Capriati will climb to seventh in next week's rankings, the first time she has been in the top 10 since Jan. 16, 1994, when she was ninth.