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America
Favorite Phoenix
By By Eleanor Preston
 It
takes a fearless journalist to use the C word when talking
to Jennifer Capriati. Ask her if her resurgent form of recent
months constitutes a comeback, and you are interrupted before
the offending phrase is even formed on your lips.
“But it’s not like I’m coming back,”
Capriati protests, with an expression that is half smile,
half sigh.
“Say if it were...”
“Oh, gosh. I really have to go now.”
You can’t blame Capriati for being the only person in
the world who doesn’t find the continuing undulations
of her career endlessly fascinating. But the bad news for
her is that she is cursed with a dazzling flare for creating
drama both on and off the court, and no one is going to get
bored with her any time soon.
Take her 2003 US Open semifinal against Justine Henin-Hardenne,
a match so dripping with emotion that those who trooped out
of the Arthur Ashe Stadium afterward, in the early hours of
that Saturday morning in September, looked like wrung-out
wet rags.
In a match that was voted one of the greatest ever in the
history of the women’s tour, Capriati was two points
away from winning ten times and led the match so often that
even Henin-Hardenne—who needed reviving with a saline
drip afterward—couldn’t quite believe she’d
won it.
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