Lindsay Davenport may have been reared on the sunny hard courts of Southern California, land of many a tennis star, but she became the unlikeliest of champions.
At 6-ft-2 ½ and 175 pounds after she’d worked hard to slim down and get fit, Davenport wasn’t your typical lithe, tanned and supremely athletic goddess. She was one of tennis’s first “big babes,” as Mary Carillo memorably called a new generation of powerful players, and she lumbered rather than skirted about the court. But Davenport’s sharply struck serves and groundstrokes landed with a thud that few of her peers could match.
Though the former World No. 1 captured three Grand Slam titles as well as the Olympic gold medal in Atlanta, Davenport’s star wattage always burned a little less brightly than those that came before and after her: Steffi Graf, the Williams sisters, Maria Sharapova.
“I think I stand for the girls that, you know, in certain terms are ordinary,” Davenport reasoned, returning after a year off to play her 17th US Open this year at the age of 32 and as mother of a one-year-old boy, Jagger. “I don't like flash. I don't try to get a lot of attention. And I think that there is, you know, a niche for people out there like that.”
If Davenport is the ordinary girl who became an ordinary, well-grounded woman, growing up on the tennis courts under the glare of an often critical public, the Californian’s career has been anything but commonplace.
Davenport has won more prize money, $22m, than any other woman in professional sports. She has accumulated 55 WTA singles titles (as well as 37 doubles trophies), winning the US Open (1998), Wimbledon (1999) and the Australian Open (2000), and reaching four additional Grand Slam finals.
When she lost to Marion Bartoli – nine years her junior – in the third round on Friday night, the 23rd seed Davenport was hoping to defy her age, injuries and recent time off from the tour to return to the winner’s circle at a Slam as a wife and mother, long past her first appearance at Flushing Meadows in 1991.
She wouldn’t say if she’d be back to contest another one.
“Each time I play a Grand Slam I always think, Oh, this could be my last time playing here,” said Davenport. “I've obviously learned that I have no idea what the future kind of holds and what will happen, and I don't make decisions for the future anymore [beyond the] day that I'm living in.”
Davenport’s singular strength as a player has always been her extraordinary ball-striking ability. She hits the ball as cleanly as anyone ever has in the women’s game.
As an extremely tall teen, her raw hitting ability and power were obvious, but Davenport was severely handicapped by her lack of mobility. If the ball was in her strike zone, she could crush pinpoint winners within centimeters of the lines. Her flat strokes, honed on the California asphalt, were heavy and penetrating. She could hit opponents off the court.
But get her into a running match and she was in trouble.
Later in her career, her movement continued to be a liability, although less so than in her early days on tour. Now, having returned to the game with the competing demands of raising a child, she must try to keep up with a still faster game and much younger opponents.
Off the Court: A Winning Personality
In a sport known for its divas and cutthroat locker-room disses, Davenport throughout her career has remained grounded; she is routinely lauded by tennis insiders as one of the most gracious, genuine and appealing personalities off the court.
Anne Worcester, tournament director of Pilot Pen Tennis in New Haven, CT, where Davenport has played nine times, and former CEO of the WTA in the mid-90s, when the Californian was coming into her stride, says Davenport “is a great champion, but so down to earth.”
“I made the mistake one time of sending a limousine to pick her up at the airport,” said Worcester. “When Lindsay got to the tournament, she said ‘If you ever send me a limo again, I’ll never speak to you.' ”
Worcester said Davenport, unassuming and unfailingly generous with her time, just wanted a regular car or taxi. “She’s a tournament director’s dream.”
“I try to bring as little drama as possible, unlike some other players we have,” offered Davenport. “And I think that people have watched me growing up. I think they've seen me mature, and I think they've seen that you can be successful and not be psychotic, be realistic, have good people around you, and just…try to enjoy it now more than I used to.”
Yet on-court, the good-natured, easygoing Davenport has often appeared to be a wholly different creature. When things aren’t going well in a match, she, like some of her more petulant and self-involved peers, has been known to be overly self-critical and sour. “Her body language doesn’t always convey that she’s happy out there,” said Worcester.
To many observers, Davenport’s on-court demeanor is incongruous with the level, charming and generous character they’ve witnessed when she’s not in tennis clothes. Perhaps it’s the critical nature of a perfectionist, a player who overcame a lack of physical athletic gifts with a preternatural ability to flawlessly strike a tennis ball.
“I do try to make a concerted effort to enjoy it more,” claimed Davenport. “I was really trying to do it at the Olympics and trying to do things that I maybe normally wouldn't do, knowing I won't be at another Olympics.”
Over the course of nearly two decades, in a career that has seen heights very few, especially Davenport herself, would have predicted, the Californian has become not just a champion, but a sympathetic fan favorite.
“I've never played tennis to be famous or popular or well‑liked,” says Davenport, sounding, as ever, forthright. “It just was kind of thrust upon me.”
She’s the regular girl all grown up, to whom fans can easily relate: she’s battled her demons and her weight, she’s achieved her dreams but never become haughty or demanding, she’s balanced career and family, and she keeps on working and fighting.
Who can’t admire that?
