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 | | You are in: In Depth: Wimbledon 2001 |
| |  Monday, 2 July, 2001, 15:53 GMT 16:53 UK Time for Serena to knuckle down  Serena Williams faces a showdown with Capriati BBC Sport Online's Claire Stocks looks forward to the mouthwatering Wimbledon quarter-final clash betweern Serena Williams and Jennifer Capriati. Serena Williams has been tested so little in the first four rounds of Wimbledon she has been doing her real preparation on the practice court. She has dropped just 11 games in the eight sets of tennis on her way to a quarter-final meeting with Jennifer Capriati, the Australian and French Open champion. Some games have been so easy it's not her opponent that has been on her mind, but the book she's reading or the dress she's going to wear to the winners ball. There has often been so little tennis to talk about after another straight-sets demolition that her media conferences quickly degenerate into a kind of ad-hoc talk show.
Subjects such as her pet dog, online shopping habits and her penchant for fashion (she hand-sewed a sequined butterfly onto her tennis dress and carries a sketchbook to draw outfits she likes) are more frequently discussed than her game. In the absence of a real test, Serena has been working out on the practice courts instead. "My dad and I discussed in the slams how I tend to fly through my matches," she said. "So we're working on a plan on doing things that we work on in practice so when I do play a harder player, like I did against Venus in the semis last year, then I'll be ready. "Then I won't just be used to getting through against players who weren't really hitting that hard." Serena knows this time she cannot afford to let her concentration slip, as she did in the quarter-final of the French Open when Capriati defeated her on the way to her second major title of the year. "I'm sure that wasn't me out there but some imposter. I was hitting so many errors and going crazy," admitted Serena.
"This time I am going to make sure I am out there performing and playing the way Serena Williams knows how to play." Williams junior says that defeat, in which she rallied from a set behind only to lose the final set 6-2, is one of the reasons she has been so fired up since. "Normally, I like to put things behind me and insist they never happen again. "But I was so dissatisfied with the way I played in that match that I did not want to put it behind me. I want to remember it and use it to make me more determined." Serena says last season she felt she was playing "immaculate tennis" but knows she has to improve her serve. In her quarter-final match against Capriati, she missed 57 per cent of her first serves. She also managed to convert only three out of nine break points, while Capriati polished off all seven.
It is a telling statistic. While Serena owns up to a tendency to allow her mind to wander, Capriati's single-minded focus since her comeback is one of her key strengths. But Capriati says though outwardly she may look cool, inside she is often "a volcano waiting to erupt". The 25-year-old says it is the inner strength she found to come back from the wilderness that inspires her when the going gets tough. "I tell myself how great it is that I have come this far, to enjoy life, that it's only a game, that there are worse things that happen, that I have done well already and must remember to have fun." Around her neck Capriati wears a silver cross, a gift from her mother made from an old family ring, which she fingers like a talisman. "I believe there is a greater purpose. It's part of trying to find yourself, working out what we are all doing here." It is this ability, since she came off the rails as a mixed-up teenage star, to put tennis in perspective that makes her so difficult to beat. A player finally at peace with herself, Capriati has bigger things on her mind than what to wear to the Wimbledon ball. | |
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