The Ghost of Jennifer Hovers Over Fed Cup

BJK & Williamses want Cup back bad

By Matthew Cronin
tennisreporters.net

Jennifer Capriati at the '02 Fed Cup press conference before being removed from the team by captain Billie Jean King.

Susan Mullane/ Camerawork USA, Inc.

FROM THE FED CUP IN LOWELL, MASS. – Even though Jennifer Capriati is at home more than 1,000 miles away from the U.S. Fed Cup tie against Czech Republic, her specter looms darkly over the brightly lit Tsongas Arena in historic Lowell.

It was a year ago that the US. Fed Cup team melted down against Austria in Charlotte, N.C. when captain Billie Jean King kicked Capriati off the team for allegedly violating team rules that banned practices with private coaches, in the form of her father, Stefano.

Jennifer swore and stomped her way to the airport on the Friday night of the tie, the US was forced to forfeit her match on Saturday to Eva Fauth and then a clearly emotionally exhausted Monica Seles (who sat up much of the night consoling a distraught King), was sliced up by Barbara Schwartz.

Then on Sunday,  Meghann Shaughnessy was cast into the role of team savior, but fell to Schwartz in a 9-7 heartbreaker in the third set in the clincher.

"I'll always be sad about it," King said on Thursday in Lowell. "But you can either see it as a disaster or a new opportunity. It’s a motivational factor for all of us. Every single player has come up to me and said: 'We've got to bring back the Cup, this is ridiculous and let’s just make it happen.' "

WILLIAMS SISTERS HEAD NEW LINEUP
"All of us" is the almost entirely new team who face the Czech Republic this coming weekend: Serena and Venus Williams, Alexandra Stevenson and Shaughnessy. Add to that list of available stalwarts for July’s tie: Seles, Lindsay Davenport, Chanda Rubin and Lisa Raymond, among others.

But BJK says that she won’t invite three-time Slam champ Capriati to re-join the team until Capriati agrees to meet with her in person and talk over what occurred.

"We have to sit down face-to-face like champions do with each other," said King, who has not spoken to Capriati since last April. "She has to take responsibility for what happened and talk to me about it. I’ve known Jennifer since she’s been 12 and I think she’s working through a lot of things right now. I hope she does well."

This summit may never happen, given how stubborn Capriati can be and how vehement King is about everyone following the same rules. It is highly unlikely that Capriati will ever admit to wrong doing because she believes she was blindsided with the rules when she arrived in Charlotte and wouldn’t have agreed to go in the first place if she would have known that she couldn’t practice with Stefano.

King, Seles, Shaughnessy and Raymond all believe that Capriati should have been more flexible and let it go. But Capriati wouldn’t let it go and hasn’t indicated publicly since then that she is willing to let bygones be bygones, other than having her new agent, IMG’s Gavin Forbes, fax in a letter to King saying that Jennifer was available for this weekend’s tie.

NO FED CUP, NO OLYMPICS
Remember, if Capriati did not make herself available to play Fed Cup in the coming year, then the '92 Olympic gold medalist would have been ineligible to play in the '04 Olympics in Athens.

But Capriati already knew that the Williamses were slated to play and there is no way at this stage of her career that she’s willing to play a back-up singles role to anyone – especially her greatest rivals. She also knew that King wouldn’t ask her to come and just play a dead rubber match.

Moreover, imagine BJK asking JCap to come instead of Shaughnessy and join a team that includes the jolly clique of great friends Serena, Venus and Alexandra. Talk about feeling left out in the cold.

But Jennifer isn’t here shivering in the 38-degree nights and wondering who she should go out to dinner with. She’s in cozy Florida, probably wondering whether King will call her in a couple months and ask her to play the quarterfinals against either Sweden or Italy. And maybe she's back in Florida trying to get her cable company to take the free preview of the Tennis Channel so she can take a few lessons from Serena on how to close out matches in Lowell.

Or not.

Pumped up to Check the Czechs
The U..S is a huge favorite to take the Czechs, even if Daja Bedanova quickly rediscovers her excellent 2001 form. Both Serena and Venus Williams looked very focused in practicing against each other on Thursday and maybe the thought of having to potentially battle through Belgium (Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin-Hardenne) or France (Amelie Mauresmo, Nathalie Dechy and Marion Bartoli) in November is charging them up.

King is certainly ready to lead the US to a record 18th title.

"We’re very pumped up this year," King said. "After what happened last year, we are very determined to bring the Fed Cup back home. After Charlotte, the players really bonded together in their goals and commitments."

After winning the '00 Fed cup title in Las Vegas over Spain, the US opted out of playing the '01 final in Madrid due to post-September 11 security concerns. Belgium won the title. King expected to raise the Cup again last year until the Charlotte charade. The Slovak Republic – courtesy of the now seriously slumping Hantuchova – ended up winning that crown.

With top-ranked Serena, third-ranked Venus and back-ups Shaughnessy and Stevenson, it’s almost unimaginable to picture an upset by  the once mighty Czechs, which feature a very green team headed by the 44th-ranked Bedanova, 71st-ranked Iveta Benesova, 73rd-ranked Klara Koukalova and No. 163-ranked Eva Birnerova.

"We have the best players in the world and we expect to win, but we can’t afford to look ahead," said King, who has lead her team to three titles in the last eight years. "They are very motivated to make sure what happened against Austria doesn’t happen again. But I’d never had a fully healthy team. In team play, the human element is so strong, the heart and soul. You never know what can happen – especially in Fed Cup, when players are representing their countries. Bedanova could pull a Barbara Schwartz."

Or not, and revert to her 2003 form, which has seen the once promising conqueror of Seles go 5-12, including losses to the likes of Angelique Widjaja, Magui Serna, Maja Matevzic and two defeats to Marie-Gaiane Mikaelian. Double ouch.

The Williams sisters haven’t played a Fed Cup tie since the '99 final, when at Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif. recently crowned U.S. Open champ Serena sat happily on the singles sidelines and watched Venus and Lindsay Davenport defeat Russia. Even if the sisters lead the US to victory over the Czech Republic, there’s no guarantee that they will play again this year.

"I don’t know if they will," King said. "I haven’t talked to them about it yet. I’d like all our players to commit for the whole year, but that’s not how it works in the real world."

Even though Serena recently suffered her first loss of the year to Justine Henin-Hardenne on clay in the Family Circle Cup final, it’s Venus (along with Stevenson) who clearly needs more tutoring. Venus has played three tournaments this year, losing a heartbreaker final to Serena in Australia where her serve failed her late, winning Antwerp over Clijsters, and having her serve torn apart by Shaughnessy in Miami.

"We’re working on helping Venus play with high intensity all the time, getting her forehand more consistent and fixing technical problems in her serve," King said.

In a new wrinkle for Fed Cup, young US players are being employed as hitting partners. Jamea Jackson and Ally Baker have the pleasure of  working  with the Williamses this week.

When the US Davis Cup team heads to the Slovak Republic in September, they may be playing in the still-being-constructed Slovak National Tennis Center in Bratislava. It’s possible that Andy Roddick, James Blake, et al. will face Karol Kucera and Dominik Hrbaty on the new facility’s outdoor red clay courts.