The Ego Has Landed

Thank heaven for little girls – as Maurice Chevalier sang in Gigi – especially those with an attitude. Tennis’ new baby brigade is bold, brash and beautiful. Sugar and spice and everything nice, they’re not. Their credo: Why let your racket do all the talking, when a tart tongue can deliver much more delicious devastation. 

Cheeky Martina Hingis, the Can’t-Miss Swiss, is No. 1 in the rankings but not among some of her peers, who resent her arrogance and narcissism. When asked what becoming the youngest winner of a Grand Slam tournament – the Australian Open, meant to her, the 16-year-old Hingis replied, “It’s just another record for me. I mean, I have so many records already.” When Hingis was compared with golf’s new superstar, she shot back, “I think I’m even better than Tiger Woods.” 

Cocksure American Venus Starr Williams {see Publisher Letter, page 2}, the surprise U.S. Open finalist, insists she’ll dethrone Hingis and then face her toughest competition from her super-athletic sister Serena. She even crows, “I could go beyond No. 1 because there are times when an athlete is just ahead of the rest of the league. That could be me. It’s like Michael Jordan and the rest of the players in the NBA. He was a step ahead of everyone else. With the way I play and my height and aggressiveness and courage and no fear, I could change the game.”

But the undisputed queen of the brat pack is Anya Kurnikova. After the older and more advanced Hingis embarrassed Kurnikova 6-0, 6-0 at the 1994 Junior U.S. Open, the Russian reportedly told her: “You won, but I’m prettier and more marketable than you.” Round 1 in post-match repartee to Special K!

Bad as she wants to be, “Anya is a goddamn Dennis Rodman all over again,” says her noted coach Nick Bollettieri. “She’s a very individualistic girl who is accountable only to herself. Like Rodman, she isn’t outwardly concerned about the world and does whatever she wants to do.” Not since teen rebel Andre Agassi, has Bollettieri faced the challenge of molding such talent without stifling a headstrong spirit. The former tough-guy army paratrooper, who once ran his famous Florida tennis academy like a boot camp, has finally met his match in the sassy, blond bombshell. “I’ve never been able to control her,” he admits.

The odd couple hooked up six years ago when Bollettieri was floored by the rambunctious, mighty mite from Moscow. “From the moment I met Anya, she was very bold, very aggressive,” recalled Bollettieri. “She takes over everything. And she wants it now. She doesn’t want to share with other people. She wants her time. She wants the feature court. It’s got to be for Anya Kurnikova. If it rains, she doesn’t care about the whole academy. She wants her court inside. She’s on a mission. And nothing is going to stop her.”

The prima donna with a plan took on and nearly took over the 1990 Kremlin Cup as a pushy nine-year-old. As part of the preliminary event before the nightly men’s matches, Anya was the most talented of a dozen Russian youngsters who were supposed to rotate, so everyone would get a chance to strut their stuff before thousands of fans in the huge Olympic Stadium.

“I got advance notice of Anya’s attitude when she insisted on headlining every session’s exhibition,” recalled Gene Scott, who helped organize the pro tournament, in his Tennis Week column. “She was already not only the group’s most gifted but best show girl, if not show-off, and it was easy to be lured into giving Anya her way. I wasn’t the only one beguiled.”

Shoving herself into the spotlight paid off. Poppi Vinti, the representative for Ellesse, the Kremlin Cup’s official sportswear, rewarded Anya with dresses and shirts, all the better for the preen queen to show off her pretty, but pouting face and precocious shotmaking. Soon after, she signed one of the earliest sports endorsement contracts with Ellesse. By age 10, she was a client of IMG, the world’s biggest sports management company. 

She didn’t have to pass out business cards the way Monica Seles, another Bollettieri protege, did as a hustling 13-year-old at the Orange Bowl International Junior Championships. Tennis people knew Anya – for better or for worse. And she showed little respect for some of the game’s biggest names. Asked if she would like to meet superstar Boris Becker at the Lipton tournament, 12-year-old Anya replied: “I wouldn’t.” What about Steffi Graf? It turned out that she had no desire to meet her either. In contrast, earlier whiz kid Tracy Austin did a term paper on her idols, Billie Jean King and Rod Laver, when she was in elementary school.

Like her or loathe her, Special K can really play, as she showed by reaching the semifinals in her Wimbledon debut. “The wonderful thing about this generation is that, when you look at Martina and Anya and Venus, they are all complete players, and I don’t think we’ve ever seen this in any generation,” marveled Chris Evert, who won Wimbledon and the French Open at 19, an almost ancient age for teen conquests nowadays. “Before, Margaret Court and Billie Jean King were serve and volleyers, then I helped the generation of baseliners. Now you have it all in players so young.”

Well, not quite. Hingis, extremely well-coached by her ambitious mother Melanie – who says she first realized Martina would become a tennis star “from the time she came out of the womb” – is the smartest player on the tour but lacks a big weapon. She also has a weak second serve that French Open champ Iva Majoli punished in their lopsided final. The inexperienced Williams didn’t play any tournaments in 1992-94 and just nine pro events in 1995-96, so lack of match toughness and inconsistency will hamper her sound and powerful game for another year or two. 

Anya, lean and fit at 5’6” and 112 pounds, brags that “I can mix it up and do everything.” Indeed, she’s a splendid athlete (her mother was a Polish tennis champion and her father a soccer star), blessed with great hands and reflexes that produce groundstroke winners, feathery drop shots and dynamic volleys in doubles net duels. But unlike Hingis, who hugs the baseline, hits the ball on the rise and opportunistically attacks, Anya often rallies from five or six feet behind the baseline and hits much flatter shots with less margin for error. 

After Hingis decisively whipped Anya 6-1, 6-3 at the recent French Open, Evert, a TV analyst for NBC, was disappointed with Anya’s performance but said, “We do see a lot of raw talent, untamed talent in Anya. And a little bit of inexperience. She certainly has all the goods, and in time, she’ll be playing better and better and becoming more confident.”

Bollettieri boasted in his autobiography, My Aces, My Faults, that “I know I am the best tennis coach in the world,” adding “That’s my talent. I help young men and women live up to their ability.”

However, lately he’s questioned whether he, or anyone, can provide the discipline and direction Anya needs to fulfill her potential. “I’ve never had the authority to take drastic action to curb Anya,” Bollettieri complains. “If the mother (Alla) would say, ‘Nick, she’s your student totally,’ then I would do a lot of things 360 degrees differently. The direction she’s going in is already mapped out by her and her mother. The same goes for the way she acts on the court. I didn’t have anything to do with it. I just told her that when you act that way, be prepared to prove who you are because you’re going to get opponents disliking you to the point that they’re going to try harder to beat you. I gave her the facts of life.”

One fact of life that rankles Anya is the age eligibility rule that was designed to protect her. The Women’s Tennis Association, fearing more of the premature burnout that ruined the careers of Tracy Austin and Andrea Jaeger and saw Jennifer Capriati self-destruct with drug problems, decided to limit the tournament play of its wondergirls. The rules do not apply to Hingis or Williams, because they joined the tour before the restrictions were introduced on January 1, 1995. 

But Anya, who turned 16 on June 7 this year, is limited to ten tour events (plus the season-ending Chase Championships) in the year up to her 17th birthday. “Venus is just coming out and Martina is already there,” says impatient Anya, ranked No. 47. “If I could have a little more chance to play, maybe I could be there also. I have to get experience. I have to learn how to win and to lose. How can I learn? All I can do is practice.” (Recently, the Corel WTA Tour liberalized the age eligibility rule, and Kurnikova will be allowed to play up to 17 tournaments.)

The WTA’s wrongheaded new ranking system – which paradoxically was created to increase tournament participation – further victimizes Anya. Dumping its point average formula, which accurately measured the quality of each player’s results, the WTA adopted a “Best 18” system that virtually coerces quantity play. “Now it’s all down to your points total and some of the other girls are planning to play about 30 tournaments, which means they’ll be better than me on the ranking list, even if I was to win all of my ten events,” rightly complains Anya. 

To her credit, Anya has always taken on all comers and disdained those who didn’t, like the much-hyped Williams sisters. In one of her memorable put-downs a couple years ago, Anya said: “I watched Serena and Venus Williams play, and they’re not that good. They’ve been given more attention than me, and they haven’t even played tournaments. They don’t know how to play points or how to win. I’ve put myself on the line. I play everybody. I’m not worried about them.” 

Indeed, Anya is a throwback to the young Jimmy Connors, a tough smart-ass kid from the wrong side of the tracks who, ready for a fight, brought brass knuckles to junior tournaments. As a fearless, pint-sized kid, Anya used to venture into the mean streets of Moscow to find a wall to hit against. Then she’d come back and challenge boys to a match and often beat them.

Now teenaged boys swarm around the court during Anya’s practice sessions eager to eye her sexy, suntanned body only scantily covered in two-piece lycra outfits. In tournament matches, her brief Adidas skirts reveal the best legs in women’s tennis, and her abbreviated tops often fly up to expose yet more skin. Not since gorgeous Gabriela Sabatini arrived a decade ago has such a seductive pubescent quickened male pulses. Evert recently said Kurnikova was “as sexy as a 16-year-old can be.” And she knows it. Pam Shriver quipped at Wimbledon that Kurnikova threatened to “wear out” the mirror in the women’s locker room because she stared at herself so much. Kurnikova even predicts that in 10 years women pros will “play half-naked.” 

Off the court, her provocatively tight/see-through clothes, adorable face and haughty demeanor turn heads wherever she goes. But few guys have worked up enough nerve to ask Anya for a date, and one who did in a player’s lounge was smugly rebuffed with “You can’t afford me!” She’s probably right, having signed several endorsement contracts that have made her a millionairess.

Tennis’ femme fatale prefers older men anyway. At the Indian Wells tourney in early 1996, Anya regularly visited the hotel bar and apparently had no trouble passing for someone much older. Her relationship with 28-year-old Russian hockey star and international playboy Sergei Fyodorov {Russian Life, Dec./Jan 1998} also has raised eyebrows. Her mother reportedly chaperones them on dates. But with Anya, who knows? When recently asked if she were dating Fyodorov, she broadly smiled and coyly answered, “Good question. I don’t know. No.”

Her fast-growing popularity extends to the Internet, where she has attracted legions of admirers from all over the world, but especially young Australians. One of the several Web sites devoted exclusively to alluring Anya has recorded 1,500 visitors in the past eight months. Romeo from the Philippines wrote: “Anya’s a chick and she stole my heart the very first time I saw her.” Edson inquired: “If you want to go out with me, come to BRASIL.” Homer, a passionate lad from Toowoomba, said: “Go Anya! Go you babe you! You thrash that Hingis girl. Get your revenge. Hugs and kisses (I wish), Homer.” 

Telegenic Anya has said that, if she weren’t playing pro tennis she’d like to be an actress. She got the attention she craves in her first Grand Slam at the U.S. Open last year, when she and 14th-seeded Barbara Paulus were the first featured match – televised on prime time – at night on the Stadium Court. With a flair for the dramatic that the 19,709 fans loved, the kid qualifier, behind 4-3 and 0-40 on her own serve in the third set, battled back to upset Paulus 3-6, 6-2, 6-4. 

After Steffi Graf whipped her 6-2, 6-1 in the next match, Anya showed why Bollettieri says “She’s a little girl who doesn’t know how to speak with the press yet.” Asked what it was like playing the great Graf on such an important occasion, Anya brusquely replied, “It was what it looked like.” At the 1997 Lipton, after beating Amanda Coetzer for the second time and then losing 6-3, 6-4 to Jana Novotna, her curt sarcasm again turned off the media. Anya answered the first post-match interview question of “What happened today?” with “I played a match.”

At November’s Kremlin Cup in Moscow, Kurnikova (ranked 12) shamelessly tanked the third, decisive set (6:1) of her opening match, losing to 24-ranked Silvia Farina, thanks to an astonishing 20 double-faults. 

But the real story was her demeanor at the press conference. She stubbornly answered questions from Russian journalists in uproarious American English. While it pleased attending Western journalists, it disappointed and vexed her compatriats. After the translator, probably twice her age, suggested that Anya translate her own English into her native Russian, lest the press miss the nuances, Anya told the translator, without flinching, “No, do your job, otherwise what purpose do you serve here?”

Special K has somewhat toned down her act as a pro, but during her junior days she earned a reputation as a hellion on the court for angrily protesting line calls a la John McEnroe and pointing to the wrong ball marks on the clay. Disgusted with her constant arguing with the umpire and linespeople at the Continental Cup, a spectator in the stands reportedly quipped, “She’d even argue over position in bed.”

The most publicized incident occurred when Anya was practicing on a court next to some British junior players. When an errant shot of hers flew onto their court, Anya loudly yelled: “British!” Having gotten their attention, she commanded: “Ball!” The incensed boys then whacked the ball over the opposite fence – commendable restraint considering some of the more violent options that must have crossed their minds. 

Too often though, what Anya wants, Anya gets. And what if she doesn’t?

“Anya is a smooth talker and has that smile,” says Bollettieri. “She always says, ‘You think it’s OK if I do this?’ Underneath, she’s saying, ‘I’m going to do it.’ And she has to be in the bullseye all the time. The center of attention. If she isn’t running the show, she’s going to try to break it up.”

Talking about young athletes who are pampered and live without rules, Martina Navratilova recently warned: “We’re going to see more and more of these athletes falling on their faces, falling off their pedestals.” 

“A lot of them will fall flat on their asses,” agrees Bollettieri, “but they probably will be quite secure financially because of their lucrative endorsement contracts.” Bollettieri has predicted that Special K will earn $5 to $15 million a year before she’s 18 “because she’s so marketable.” Whether Special K will be distracted by fortune and fame – like Agassi – and fail to reach her potential remains the burning question. 

At the 1997 Australian Open, Anya Dearest held court, explaining: “You cannot just be a great tennis player, or just be a beautiful person anymore to succeed in the game. You have to have it all, the talent, the looks, the brains and the drive.”

Whom do you think she has in mind?

Paul Fein is an award-winning sports writer from Massachusetts, and has covered the sport’s biggest stars and tournaments for the past 20 years.