Jennifer Capriati tries to beat her demons

[anointedone]

http://www.theolympian.com/sports/story/165333-p2.html

Jennifer Capriati tries to beat her demons


For more than two and a half years, Capriati, 31, has found herself in professional purgatory, afflicted with a debilitating shoulder injury that prevents her from even going out for a back yard hit.

Wayne Coffey
New York Daily News

It hasn’t happened that way. Capriati has played tennis six times since her last professional match, a 6-0, 6-1 loss to Vera Zvonareva of Russia in November 2004. She will soon have a third operation, and another on her wrist, and also try to find a solution for a degenerative condition in her back.

The ordeal has left her feeling abandoned by her former agency, IMG, and staring squarely at her athletic mortality, even as another hardcourt season moves on without her.

Can you imagine how difficult it can be when your body has always delivered strength and power as needed, and suddenly you feel as brittle as a wafer?

“I’ve only known one speed — 100 mph — and now I feel stuck in this place where I can’t move,” she says.

It has been 17 years since Jennifer Capriati emerged as a pony-tailed prodigy, the most heralded underage tennis player of all time, a sweet-faced, ball-bashing girl out of the Saddlebrook Resort who made millions in endorsements before she hit a pro ball, made the finals of her first tournament and even made the cover of Sports Illustrated. “And She’s Only 13!” the headline read.

Now the digits are reversed, and hard questions abound. Capriati isn’t the first athlete to be daunted by the impending end of a career, but it sometimes feels that way.

She is sitting on a sofa in a house she is renting while she waits to move into a home she’s building in Tampa. She is wearing a pink tank top and blue shorts and looks strikingly fit, inactivity notwithstanding. She’s a few feet from a flat-screen TV, where she watched Venus Williams win Wimbledon last weekend. It was hard. Watching the Grand Slams is always hard.

continued......

 

[anointedone]

“When I stopped playing, that’s when all this came crumbling down,” Capriati says. “If I don’t have (tennis), who am I? What am I? I was just alive because of this. I’ve had to ask, ‘Well, who is Jennifer? What if this is gone now?’ I can’t live off of this the rest of my life.”

Says her brother, Steven Capriati, a lawyer in Tallahassee, Fla., “For any athlete, once you stop doing what you’ve loved for 20 or 25 years and all of a sudden it’s taken away, it can be a tough progression into the next life.”

If Jennifer Capriati does not make it back to the tour, her legacy will go well beyond her 430 tour victories, her three Slam titles, her Olympic gold medal in Barcelona in 1992, or her epic 1991 Open semifinal with Monica Seles, one of the most riveting tennis dramas in recent memory.

It will also entail her becoming a poster girl for the perils of premature stardom, of a childhood cut short by the pursuit of money. It was 1994 when the women’s tour passed the so-called “Capriati Rule,” barring players from turning pro before their 14th birthday and setting limits on how often teenagers could play.

The measure was enacted not long after Capriati took almost a two-year leave from the sport, a well-chronicled hiatus that began after a first-round loss to Leila Meskhi of Georgia at the 1993 U.S. Open.

Rebelling from the rigors of the tour, the confines of life with her parents, Stefano and Denise Capriati and the impossibly high expectations she and others had for herself, an 18-year-old Capriati took flight. She moved out on her own, made new friends, made a point not to tell people who she was. Eight months after she walked out of Flushing Meadows, she wound up getting arrested for marijuana possession in a seedy Coral Gables, Fla., motel, police taking a bedraggled-looking mug shot that turned up in newspapers all over the world.

continued.......

 

[anointedone]

“When someone that young has such an incredible level of talent and promise, and the whole world identifies them with it, it can short-circuit the natural process of identity formation,” says Dr. Fred Wertz, chairman of Fordham’s psychology department. The result is that you see yourself in one way, doing one thing. Other options don’t even compute.

Capriati returned to the game in 1996, and was widely viewed as a 22-year-old has-been. She gradually began to regain her confidence and her punishing groundstrokes and wound up at the pinnacle of the sport, winning the Australian and French Opens in 2001, and the Australian again the next year. She was named female athlete of the year in 2001 by almost everyone.

“Everybody had written her off,” says Jim Fuhse, a special consultant to the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour and a longtime Capriati confidant. “It was the greatest comeback I’ve seen in the sport.”

Even then, though, Capriati often felt hollow inside, suffering from low self-esteem, wondering whether people really liked her, or whether they were just latching on to her celebrity. In her own mind, Capriati either won, or felt worthless.

“If I was at the height of my game, beating Serena Williams, I was on top of the world, but something was still missing inside,” Capriati says. “The happiness factor wasn’t there. I’m still struggling to find out what that is. I’ve always been self-critical. I struggle with trying to like and love myself on a daily basis.”

She stops, and runs a hand through her dark hair. “This is not just about me hitting a tennis ball. This is about the rest of my life. How am I going to live on this earth and wake up happy with who I am? Do I want to go back to tennis just to fill that void again? Is that an escape almost? Is that just the easy way out?”

Some 21 million Americans suffer from depression, according to Mental Health America, a Virginia-based advocacy group. Capriati says she has battled it for much of her life. She is in therapy and has tried medication to alleviate it, but resisted help for a long time. She was afraid what people would think, and wanted to gut it out by herself.

Capriati says she has never tried to commit suicide, never gotten to the point where she had a vial of pills in her hand. Still, the thoughts come and go, less so now than before. It’s hard to know what triggers them. Her frustration over her shoulder and back ailments have been immense. Almost the moment she stopped playing, she felt she was an afterthought to IMG, the agency that represented her for almost 20 years.

“Basically, it was , ‘Out of sight, out of mind,”’ Capriati says. “There are more important prospects out there at the moment.”

It bothered her that nobody from the USTA called to check in. But Capriati doesn’t want to dwell on perceived slights, or feel like a victim. “I can sit here and point fingers, but what’s important is where I go from here.” Nor does she want to blame her father, the orchestrator of her career. While Capriati believes that turning pro so young “backfired,” and that it was too much, too soon, she believes Stefano Capriati has been unfairly lumped with the tour’s more maniacal tennis fathers, when he really only had her best interests at heart.

Everything she has been through has taught Capriati much about life. If she were to have a daughter who showed athletic promise, she knows for sure would not force-feed stardom. She’d want her to have fun with it, enjoy the process, not get consumed with expectations and seriousness the way Capriati did.

“She’s the most hyped player of all time,” Pam Shriver, the former tour player, once said of Capriati. “Nobody can operate with those kinds of expectations without repercussions.”

As the conversation turns to her greatest moments — he Olympic gold medal 15 years ago, the Grand Slam triumphs — Capriati stops, and her eyes well up.

“I’m thinking I’m never going to have those highs again. Nothing is ever going to measure up to that again. But I know it’s not true. I can find another high, whether it’s a family, something I’m passionate about. Now I don’t have anyone telling me what to do. I don’t have to answer to anyone anymore. Now this is my time to shine.”

She admires the energy and dedication of Andrea Jaeger, the former top player who has become a nun, and the commitment Andre Agassi has made to his inner-city school in Las Vegas. She hopes to find her own niche — to become able-bodied again, get after something good and meaningful.

So where does Jennifer Capriati go from here? Some days are better than others. Depression is neither tidy nor predictable. She knows it’s dangerous to isolate, to get into the toxic mindset of believing that nobody can know her pain.

Capriati wants to bring her competitor’s heart to the fore. She is grateful for her family and her financial security, the good things in her life. Two days ago, she saw a chiropractor and kinesiologist who made her feel better. Toward the close of a two-hour discussion, Jennifer Capriati takes a moment to reflect and looks at you and seems resolute and strong, no longer America’s pony-tailed prodigy whacking a yellow-green ball, but a woman in search of respite, and hope.

“I know (suicide) is not the answer,” she says. “I only have one go at this. Even if it’s torturous, you have to stick it out. Maybe this is all a blessing. I’m still young. I still have time to figure it out.

“I have a choice. Am I going to let this defeat me, and make me not even want to be here? Or am I going to do something to not let this break me down, and maybe help other people? That’s the mission I’m on now, to find happiness and positiveness in the future.”

 

[MEAC_ALLAMERICAN]

Dang!!!

Your good.

Thank you though..

 

[anointedone]

Dang!!!

Your good.

Thank you though..

God, its scary the way she talks sometimes. Talking about suicide?! She may be bitter about being forced to retire a bit early, but she has 3 slam titles, she has a good family, she is now at an age you are kind of supposed to retire anyway. Alot of people have it worse of then her.

 

[lambielspins]

Yikes, that is just scary.

 

[Gugafan_Redux]

Reminiscent of what Pat Cash was saying about once you're done, the sport (agents, acadamies, sponsors, hangers-on) drops you like a sack of potatoes. It was fun watching Jen's resurgence. She left it all out there, especially in those clay matches. She had great intensity.

 

[migjam]

That is kind of scary how she is thinking right now. Sounds like she needs some good therapy, if she isn't already doing that.

 

[ATXtennisaddict]

good article, explores the person. Thanks!

 

[keithchircop]

Very introspective comments on her part - the therapy must be getting somewhere. Who knows she might recover and win some senior/doubles titles.

 

[simi]

Thanks for posting. Just last week, I was wondering about her and why she wasn't playing anymore. Hadn't heard that she retired. As other's have said, her talk is scary. I truly hope she 'finds' herself and becomes content in who she is and what she chooses to do.

 

[bluegrasser]

I miss JC, one of the few woman pros that I really liked....

 

[Chauvalito]

Yes, hopefully she continues with therapy and treatment.

This is quite sad, I think you can tell from this article that despite the comeback and her triumph, she never really grew up, or matured from the events in her teens.

I am not trying to be rude, but she seems to be wallowing a bit, in what, I dont know...but at 31, she seems to lack the maturity to objectively look at her life and career..

 

[jaggy]

I truly wish her all the best

 

[armand]

I truly wish her all the best

Are you Andrea Jaeger?

 

[mentalcase]

Yes, hopefully she continues with therapy and treatment.

This is quite sad, I think you can tell from this article that despite the comeback and her triumph, she never really grew up, or matured from the events in her teens.

I am not trying to be rude, but she seems to be wallowing a bit, in what, I dont know...but at 31, she seems to lack the maturity to objectively look at her life and career..

That's true. The reason being, is that tennis was her whole life! She did not have any outside interest, she was groomed from the beginning to be a tennis player. So, I'm not surprised when she finds herself injured and has no idea what to do to occupy her time. Everyone is her life was focused on her career and now that she doesn't have one, they all disappeared.

Richard Williams looks like a genius by making sure Venus and Serena had something else in their life besides tennis.

 

[NadalandFedererfan]

That's true. The reason being, is that tennis was her whole life! She did not have any outside interest, she was groomed from the beginning to be a tennis player. So, I'm not surprised when she finds herself injured and has no idea what to do to occupy her time. Everyone is her life was focused on her career and now that she doesn't have one, they all disappeared.

Richard Williams looks like a genius by making sure Venus and Serena had something else in their life besides tennis.

Exactly poor girl.

 

[Moose Malloy]

That's true. The reason being, is that tennis was her whole life! She did not have any outside interest, she was groomed from the beginning to be a tennis player. So, I'm not surprised when she finds herself injured and has no idea what to do to occupy her time. Everyone is her life was focused on her career and now that she doesn't have one, they all disappeared.

besides all that, she does seem dumb as a rock. sharapova sounds like a member of mensa in comparison, capriati's press conferences sounded exactly the same when she was 15 & as when she was 25.

 

[Lee James]

That's true. The reason being, is that tennis was her whole life! She did not have any outside interest, she was groomed from the beginning to be a tennis player. So, I'm not surprised when she finds herself injured and has no idea what to do to occupy her time. Everyone is her life was focused on her career and now that she doesn't have one, they all disappeared.

Richard Williams looks like a genius by making sure Venus and Serena had something else in their life besides tennis.

I agree. I really feel for Jen and can understand how difficult it must be to have the one thing you go to for comfort, or basically your lifes worth taken away from you. I really hope that she can find herself and some peace of mind.

 

[navratilovafan]

It is impressive she does not resent her father at all for any of this. It shows she is a real class act. His pushing her so soon is where alot of the blame lies.

 

[Deuce]

That is kind of scary how she is thinking right now. Sounds like she needs some good therapy, if she isn't already doing that.

No - what she needs is a good friend. It seems rather obvious that she's never had one.

The problem is that, in being 'famous', everyone accepted her as she was. She was always a troubled person - for various reasons, the details of which none of us know. But no-one gave a damn. No-one ever bothered to truly get to know her.
No doubt there were many 'groupies' around her who just liked to hang around with someone whao is 'famous'. Her dad seemed more interested in her career and the money it brings than in her life. And apparently no other players on the tour really got to know her well enough to see how screwed up she is. And if they did know, they didn't try to help.
This is quite common - it's much easier to ignore a problem than to try to help fix it.

Yes, hopefully she continues with therapy and treatment.

Why is 'therapy' such a magical word?
Because it's marketed that way by the psychiatric industry.
Psychological 'therapy' is the most overrated BS in North American culture.

besides all that, she does seem dumb as a rock. sharapova sounds like a member of mensa in comparison, capriati's press conferences sounded exactly the same when she was 15 & as when she was 25.

Well... yes... she's got this obstacle to overcome, as well...

 

[Gugafan_Redux]

Duece, you say she needs a good friend, and you say therapy is a bunch of BS. But what are the benefits of a good friend? Someone to confide in, share your ups and downs with, someone to listen to you, understand you, help you, care for you, advise you, provide you needed persepective, direction, steer you to growth. That's basically what a therapist does. It's a professional relationship to provide those things. If you move past the image of the leather couch and the bearded, cordorouy-jacket-wearing, pipe-smoking pensive shrink, you'll find that professional counselling is an immensely helpful thing for millions of people.

 

[rommil]

besides all that, she does seem dumb as a rock. sharapova sounds like a member of mensa in comparison, capriati's press conferences sounded exactly the same when she was 15 & as when she was 25.

I agree with Capriati not being the sharpest one around. It's entertaining to see her play but it is kind of disproportionate how some athletes that look very mentally strong on their courts have a hard time coping up with problems outside of it. How she was brought up and her family dynamics play a very good part of how she is now. Looking back at Jennifer's past it seemed like she had problems coping anyways. I wish her the best in finding ways out of her rut and go out there and live LIFE.

 

[naffi]

Thanks for posting this whole story. It's a good one.
This is sad on a lot of levels -- that she can't play, that she feels abandoned, that she doesn't know what to do with herself if she's not playing tennis. To be 31 years old, and essentially lost is just a reflection of how she's been coddled her entire life, and her parents ought to be ashamed. You raise a self-confident and assured child, you get a strong adult. She didn't just get that way, and if her family reads that article, they should get their collective behinds in gear and help her.

http://www.tenniswithattitude.blogspot.com

“When someone that young has such an incredible level of talent and promise, and the whole world identifies them with it, it can short-circuit the natural process of identity formation,” says Dr. Fred Wertz, chairman of Fordham’s psychology department. The result is that you see yourself in one way, doing one thing. Other options don’t even compute.

Capriati returned to the game in 1996, and was widely viewed as a 22-year-old has-been. She gradually began to regain her confidence and her punishing groundstrokes and wound up at the pinnacle of the sport, winning the Australian and French Opens in 2001, and the Australian again the next year. She was named female athlete of the year in 2001 by almost everyone.

“Everybody had written her off,” says Jim Fuhse, a special consultant to the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour and a longtime Capriati confidant. “It was the greatest comeback I’ve seen in the sport.”

Even then, though, Capriati often felt hollow inside, suffering from low self-esteem, wondering whether people really liked her, or whether they were just latching on to her celebrity. In her own mind, Capriati either won, or felt worthless.

“If I was at the height of my game, beating Serena Williams, I was on top of the world, but something was still missing inside,” Capriati says. “The happiness factor wasn’t there. I’m still struggling to find out what that is. I’ve always been self-critical. I struggle with trying to like and love myself on a daily basis.”

She stops, and runs a hand through her dark hair. “This is not just about me hitting a tennis ball. This is about the rest of my life. How am I going to live on this earth and wake up happy with who I am? Do I want to go back to tennis just to fill that void again? Is that an escape almost? Is that just the easy way out?”

Some 21 million Americans suffer from depression, according to Mental Health America, a Virginia-based advocacy group. Capriati says she has battled it for much of her life. She is in therapy and has tried medication to alleviate it, but resisted help for a long time. She was afraid what people would think, and wanted to gut it out by herself.

Capriati says she has never tried to commit suicide, never gotten to the point where she had a vial of pills in her hand. Still, the thoughts come and go, less so now than before. It’s hard to know what triggers them. Her frustration over her shoulder and back ailments have been immense. Almost the moment she stopped playing, she felt she was an afterthought to IMG, the agency that represented her for almost 20 years.

“Basically, it was , ‘Out of sight, out of mind,”’ Capriati says. “There are more important prospects out there at the moment.”

It bothered her that nobody from the USTA called to check in. But Capriati doesn’t want to dwell on perceived slights, or feel like a victim. “I can sit here and point fingers, but what’s important is where I go from here.” Nor does she want to blame her father, the orchestrator of her career. While Capriati believes that turning pro so young “backfired,” and that it was too much, too soon, she believes Stefano Capriati has been unfairly lumped with the tour’s more maniacal tennis fathers, when he really only had her best interests at heart.

Everything she has been through has taught Capriati much about life. If she were to have a daughter who showed athletic promise, she knows for sure would not force-feed stardom. She’d want her to have fun with it, enjoy the process, not get consumed with expectations and seriousness the way Capriati did.

“She’s the most hyped player of all time,” Pam Shriver, the former tour player, once said of Capriati. “Nobody can operate with those kinds of expectations without repercussions.”

As the conversation turns to her greatest moments — he Olympic gold medal 15 years ago, the Grand Slam triumphs — Capriati stops, and her eyes well up.

“I’m thinking I’m never going to have those highs again. Nothing is ever going to measure up to that again. But I know it’s not true. I can find another high, whether it’s a family, something I’m passionate about. Now I don’t have anyone telling me what to do. I don’t have to answer to anyone anymore. Now this is my time to shine.”

She admires the energy and dedication of Andrea Jaeger, the former top player who has become a nun, and the commitment Andre Agassi has made to his inner-city school in Las Vegas. She hopes to find her own niche — to become able-bodied again, get after something good and meaningful.

So where does Jennifer Capriati go from here? Some days are better than others. Depression is neither tidy nor predictable. She knows it’s dangerous to isolate, to get into the toxic mindset of believing that nobody can know her pain.

Capriati wants to bring her competitor’s heart to the fore. She is grateful for her family and her financial security, the good things in her life. Two days ago, she saw a chiropractor and kinesiologist who made her feel better. Toward the close of a two-hour discussion, Jennifer Capriati takes a moment to reflect and looks at you and seems resolute and strong, no longer America’s pony-tailed prodigy whacking a yellow-green ball, but a woman in search of respite, and hope.

“I know (suicide) is not the answer,” she says. “I only have one go at this. Even if it’s torturous, you have to stick it out. Maybe this is all a blessing. I’m still young. I still have time to figure it out.

“I have a choice. Am I going to let this defeat me, and make me not even want to be here? Or am I going to do something to not let this break me down, and maybe help other people? That’s the mission I’m on now, to find happiness and positiveness in the future.”

 

[princess bossass]

Duece, you say she needs a good friend, and you say therapy is a bunch of BS. But what are the benefits of a good friend? Someone to confide in, share your ups and downs with, someone to listen to you, understand you, help you, care for you, advise you, provide you needed persepective, direction, steer you to growth. That's basically what a therapist does. It's a professional relationship to provide those things. If you move past the image of the leather couch and the bearded, cordorouy-jacket-wearing, pipe-smoking pensive shrink, you'll find that professional counselling is an immensely helpful thing for millions of people.

Excellent post. Therapy and psychoanalysis get an unfortunate, undeserved bad rap. I partly agree with Deuce by the same token that I don't think ANYTHING should be considered a silver bullet that we should resort to in lieu of all other alternatives, but therapy has proven itself useful (life-changing, life-saving, marriage-saving, etc.) for a lot of people. Personal relationships and the like are an important factor in mental health, but one's relationship with a therapist is completely different from that with a friend. A therapist is a neutral, disinterested party whose professional responsibility is to serve your best interests. Even the best friend on earth can be blinded by selfish motives, conscious or unconscious.

Still, while JC would presumably have no difficulty affording the best therapy that psychology or psychoanalysis has to offer, fame and fortune can't buy true friendship or build a support network for you. Maybe that is the missing link for Jennifer. Regardless--sad story. :-(

 

[Deuce]

Duece, you say she needs a good friend, and you say therapy is a bunch of BS. But what are the benefits of a good friend? Someone to confide in, share your ups and downs with, someone to listen to you, understand you, help you, care for you, advise you, provide you needed persepective, direction, steer you to growth. That's basically what a therapist does. It's a professional relationship to provide those things. If you move past the image of the leather couch and the bearded, cordorouy-jacket-wearing, pipe-smoking pensive shrink, you'll find that professional counselling is an immensely helpful thing for millions of people.

The difference - and it's a huge one - is that a friend does these things out of sincere love for the person, without condition, while the therapist will give you 30 minutes or an hour of his/her time, and charge you an obscene amount for it.
The latter can hardly be considered sincere in the least.

Excellent post. Therapy and psychoanalysis get an unfortunate, undeserved bad rap. I partly agree with Deuce by the same token that I don't think ANYTHING should be considered a silver bullet that we should resort to in lieu of all other alternatives, but therapy has proven itself useful (life-changing, life-saving, marriage-saving, etc.) for a lot of people. Personal relationships and the like are an important factor in mental health, but one's relationship with a therapist is completely different from that with a friend. A therapist is a neutral, disinterested party whose professional responsibility is to serve your best interests. Even the best friend on earth can be blinded by selfish motives, conscious or unconscious.

Still, while JC would presumably have no difficulty affording the best therapy that psychology or psychoanalysis has to offer, fame and fortune can't buy true friendship or build a support network for you. Maybe that is the missing link for Jennifer. Regardless--sad story. :-(

Both of you should read Jeffrey Masson's and/or Thomas Szasz' writings about therapists and therapy.

 

[baseliner87]

if i was in her position i would prob feel the same way very very sacry though

 

[laurie]

Thanks for the article. I hope Jennifer can get through this.

 

[princess bossass]

Both of you should read Jeffrey Masson's and/or Thomas Szasz' writings about therapists and therapy.

:roll: Or you could give us the cliff notes... a brief summary... select quotes...

You are absolutely correct that there are drawbacks, pitfalls, and downright dangers to therapy, and that therapy is no substitude for unconditional love, sincere care, nurturing, kindness with no strings attached, good parenting, etc. That doesn't rule it out as potentially beneficial and helpful.

 

[dunlopfan]

When the road gets rough, you've got to keep going.