Hingis Takes Her Lesson At The Hands Of Majoli
Sydney Morning Herald
Sunday June 8, 1997
Paris: In the end, it was not Goran Ivanisevic, the bullet-serving, expletive-firing, crotch-grabbing symbol of Croatian masculinity who made history for his country, but Iva Majoli, the good-time girl who, at 19, realised her time had come and seized the day with a decisiveness that has so far eluded her better-known compatriot.
Ivanisevic would miss serves, shots and break points against someone he felt he should be beating - the opponent here being Sweden's Magnus Gustaffson, but you could fill in the blank there - and decide to fold his tent. This becomes habitual. He has lost two Wimbledon finals now. Iva Majoli could struggle through a first set and lose to an opponent who had always troubled her, then fall behind a set and 4-0 and 40-15 on that opponent's serve, as she did against Lindsay Davenport in the fourth round of the French Open, and still think she could find a way to win. Which she did. That, too, becomes habitual.
Then she could wait through Martina Hingis's attempts to forestall the inevitable end of her remarkable 40-match winning streak during the second set of Saturday's final - staging a restroom break after the fifth game, then doing nothing more than changing her shirt; then delaying the game by a further four minutes by calling for a trainer to massage and ice a thigh she later said felt like it was beginning to cramp - and serve out the match, to win the French Open title, her and Croatia's first grand slam title, 6-4 6-2. Croatia has a basketballer, Toni Kucoc, who plays for the Chicago Bulls, and Ivanisevic, to let it down at Wimbledon - since Majoli has yet to win a match there - but not much else to celebrate in the sporting sense. Until now.
"Enjoy a sight that we will surely remember the rest of our lives," Associated Press quoted tennis commentator Mico Dusanovic as telling his countrymen when Majoli raised the trophy. "I don't want to tune out. This picture deserves to stay on as long as possible."
It's only now, Majoli thinks, that she is ready to be the focus of her country's acclaim and the game's scrutiny - the latter of which has been Hingis's other job since her professional career began almost two years ago.
"With me at 16, I was more like 13," Majoli said. "Martina with 16 is like a grown-up. Maybe we're just different. I always had lots of friends, I was always outgoing. Nobody ever stopped me from doing other things in tennis.
"I wasn't ready for anything too big at 16 or 17. I had a great time those years. I just did everything that normal people do." Among those normal things was to make a host of friends, of both sexes, in and outside tennis - including an Australian rower at last year's Olympics.
Hingis, from her very earliest days on the tour, was one of them.
They joked together at the net for the traditional pre-final pictures, with Hingis giving Majoli an almost-challenging look as they headed to opposite ends of the court.
From half-way through the first set, the traffic was almost entirely one-way, with Majoli finally cracking Hingis's serve in the first set on her eighth break point. She repeated the treatment twice in the second set. It was after that first service break that Hingis headed for the showers.
"Gamesmanship? Maybe a little bit," Majoli suggested. "Maybe I think, 'Did she really have to go to the bathroom?'
"On the court, we all want to win. Maybe you do things you don't mean to do, but you do it because maybe you feel it's going to help you."
It's in subtle ways like that that Hingis does herself no favours.
Her assertion after her third-round match against Anna Kournikova that she was able to have the timing of the match changed because she didn't want to start early came as the Women's Tennis Association was beginning delicate negotiations with the French Tennis Federation to have two of their quarter-finals relocated from the Suzanne Lenglen show court to centre court. In the end, all four of the quarters were played off-Broadway, as it were.
It is thought the WTA has spoken to Hingis to remind her of the diplomatic responsibilities that a world No 1 has to carry.
At 16, she is growing into her job, for this is what being the No 1 is. In that way, the French Open and its build-up have been part of the learning process.
She discovered, during her seven-week absence from the game, how much she missed it. Then, as Majoli celebrated and Croatia went mad, she learnt she could live with herself.
"It didn't make me unhappy," she said. "That's the only thing I learned."
In this company, among children old before their time and adults who make them so, that is an achievement in itself.
THE WOMEN'S FINAL IN FIGURES
French Open women's final won 6-4 6-2 by Iva Majoli (Croatia) over Martina
Hingis (Switzerland) in one hour, 19 minutes.
HINGIS (1) MAJOLI (9)
ACES 0 2
DOUBLE FAULTS 4 2
PERCENTAGE FIRST SERVES 64 60
FOREHAND WINNERS 5 16
BACKHAND WINNERS 6 8
UNFORCED ERRORS 25 28
BREAK POINTS 0 17
BREAKS OF SERVE 0 3
() denotes world ranking.
© 1997 Sydney Morning Herald