I’m counting down the 128 best players of the last century. Whee!
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Lindsay Davenport [USA]Born: 8 June 1976
Career: 1993-2008
Plays: Right-handed (two-handed backhand)
Peak rank: 1 (1998)
Peak Elo rating: 2,447 (1st place, 2000)
Major singles titles: 3
Total singles titles: 55
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Lindsay Davenport was so untouchable in the junior ranks that other players dubbed her “Bagel.”
This might be my favorite single detail I’ve learned in researching 100-plus profiles this year. Most all-time greats ruled the competition as youngsters. Yet Davenport, alone of the whole lot, got a nickname out of her habit of dropping 6-0 sets on helpless opponents.
The level of competition changed, but Davenport’s ability to take over a match never did. She recorded 125 bagel sets at tour level as a pro. The rest of the circuit returned the favor only nine times, and she won one of those matches. The American bageled Martina Hingis when the Swiss player held the number one ranking. She shut out Elena Dementieva in a Fed Cup final. She six-loved Conchita Martínez three times. When the tennis world was atwitter over the 17-year-old Maria Sharapova, Davenport beat her 6-0, 6-0.
As good a junior as Davenport was–she won the 1992 US Open girls’ title without losing a set–her teen years couldn’t have been more anonymous. She was just a few months younger than Jennifer Capriati, who won the same junior title three years earlier. By the time Davenport became a factor on tour, Capriati was on her first extended break. She was four years older than Hingis, who won four adult majors before Lindsay won her first. “I was never a prodigy,” she said in 1998.
The characteristics that made Davenport such a force on the junior circuit didn’t immediately translate into success against adults. The product of two volleyball players, she towered over her peers. She sprouted to her full height of nearly six-feet, three-inches in her mid-teens. It wasn’t a smooth physical transition, but few players in the juniors knew how to cope with a giant across the net, especially one with the brains to match her brawn. Adults, by contrast, immediately took advantage of her questionable movement.
Lindsay also tried her best to remain “normal.” She looked up to Mary Joe Fernández, who had managed to get her high school diploma at the same time that she gained a foothold on the circuit. Davenport would do the same. That meant a limited schedule and a balanced approach to training.
“Balance” wasn’t a word you heard around the locker room much in those days. If some snarky sportswriters are to be believed, it had one more syllable than many of the young women could manage.
So while Davenport’s peers trained at the Bollettieri Academy and learned the ropes on tour, she beat up on the juniors, did her schoolwork, and ventured only gradually into deeper waters. At the 1993 US Open, Lindsay reached the fourth round, where she forced Gabriela Sabatini to three sets, saving five match points along the way.
Sabatini’s post-match report tells you all you need to know about the 17-year-old American’s game. “She likes to hit the ball hard into the corner,” said Gabi. “Very, very hard.”
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Not everyone called Lindsay “Bagel.” That nickname hints at a good-natured relationship between the queen and her subjects. On the WTA circuit of the late 1990s, interpersonal interactions tended to be spicier.
Hence Davenport’s other, behind-the-back nickname: “Dump Truck.”
Her body filled out, and since her game depended on power, not court coverage, she could get away with carrying around some extra weight. As a teenager on the catty, clique-ish circuit, she was plenty insecure about her appearance. But the results started to come anyway. She cracked the top ten a month before her 18th birthday and she climbed as high as sixth in the world, defeating Mary Pierce and Jana Novotná to reach the title match at the 1994 year-end championships.
18-year-old Lindsay at the 1994 Slims Championships
The American press, accustomed to teens who rocketed to the top of the rankings, chose to focus on the negative. A year after nearly upsetting Sabatini at the US Open, Davenport crashed out in the third round to 44th-ranked Mara Endo of Japan. Far too many people opined, in print, that she lost because she was too fat.
Billie Jean King, who had also once struggled with her weight, disagreed:
I would say that she needs to lose ten pounds, at most…. Weight has nothing to do with her speed. That’s genetics. Who cares? The good thing is that she doesn’t have an eating disorder. Be thankful for that. I say, leave her alone.
It took another year, with a back injury and a spell outside the top ten–before Davenport got serious about her fitness. After the 1995 season, she hired a new coach, Robert Van’t Hof. The pair focused on her movement, which Van’t Hof believed had a carryover effect on the rest of her game. “[Y]ou get more balls and you stay in points longer,” he said. “Opponents notice that and they start to feel they have to do more.”
Ultimately, Davenport dropped 30 pounds. Her attitude changed. Her results improved immediately. Midway through the 1996 season, she beat Arantxa Sánchez Vicario for the gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics, then upset world number one Steffi Graf at Manhattan Beach two weeks later.
Another two years with Van’t Hof, and Lindsay became a grand slam champion.
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The first thing everyone noticed about Davenport was her height. Even as the tour got bigger, there weren’t many six-footers around. Almost as unusual was her undeniable air of normalcy.
When the era’s teen queens weren’t sniping at each other, their parents–Stefano Capriati, Jim Pierce, Richard Williams–were doing it for them. Just not Lindsay’s.
“I think Lindsay Davenport’s parents are terrific,” said Pam Shriver. “You know why? I’ve never met them. Of all the teenage wonders I’ve known, she’s the first one whose parents weren’t hanging around all the time. I’m crazy about the Davenports.”
Lindsay studiously avoided controversy, and she was one of the few players able to remain friendly with standoffish stars like Martina Hingis and Monica Seles. She gave good interviews, even after the Australian press blew her “hits like a man” comment about Amélie Mauresmo wildly out of proportion. Her cooperation flagged only when the cameras came out. She rarely posed for a picture that wasn’t absolutely necessary.
The surprisingly chummy Hingis and Davenport
It was easy to come to the conclusion that Davenport was the “sweet” one on a cutthroat circuit. While she didn’t mind the misconception, she could be as merciless as any of the spoiled daddy’s girls she faced in finals.
The 125 bagels were just the start. Her parents, Wink and Ann, usually got credit for staying out of the way. Yet a pre-teen Lindsay was at least partly responsible. At a match when she was 10 or 11 years old, she heard Wink groan after she made an error. She told him then and there, “Dad, if you do that one more time, you’ll never get to come watch me again.”
Off court, she was indeed the normal one. But no one who played her was fooled. “Even when I’m playing a friend and she hits a winner,” Lindsay said, “I’m like, ‘Who the hell do think you are?’ That’s how I think, I can’t help it.”
In 2002, Davenport said, “Most of the great players are assholes or bitches.” She didn’t exclude herself, though she did once refuse to wear a t-shirt that said “Bitch” for a magazine cover shoot. Like Hingis, Anna Kournikova, and the Williams sisters, she had an image to maintain. It was just a different image.
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Even with her gold medal, the rangy American flew under the radar. In 1997, she climbed as high as number two in the rankings, finishing the year at number three. She recorded her first win against Hingis in two years and won six titles, including the crown at Indian Wells.
The majors took a bit longer. She seemed to be limited to two bites at the cherry each season. She never cared for European clay, and her movement on grass lagged behind her ability to cover a hard court.
Davenport knocked down the last domino in 1998, the year she turned 22 years old. At the Australian Open, she double-bageled Ruxandra Dragomir and held off Venus Williams before falling in the semi-finals, her first final four appearance down under. That moved her back to number two on the ranking table, and she immediately backed it up by upsetting Hingis for the title in Tokyo.
She made the semis in Paris, as well. A quarter-final exit at Wimbledon to Nathalie Tauziat equaled her best showing there, but it ensured fans would be looking elsewhere in New York. With all eyes on Hingis and Venus Williams, Davenport won ten straight sets–two of them 6-0–to reach the semis. She knocked out Venus 6-4, 6-4, then dispatched Hingis 6-3, 7-5. How much had Lindsay’s movement improved? Against the tactically ruthless Hingis, 44 points went seven strokes or longer. Davenport won 30 of them.
The US Open victory all but guaranteed her the number one spot in the WTA rankings. She made it official in October. Concluding 1998 with a title in Zurich (defeating Venus again), a final in Philadelphia, and a final at the season-ending championships, she recorded her first of four year-end number one finishes.
Davenport handed the top ranking back to Hingis in early 1999, but her self-belief remainded as high as ever. At Wimbledon, she bulldozed qualifier Alexandra Stevenson in the semi-finals, 6-1, 6-1. Then she cheered for Graf to get past upstart Mirjana Lučić. “I thought I was going to win,” she said, “and I wanted to beat the best player.” That she did. In a tight final, Steffi gave her one break chance per set, and she converted both.
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The rankings battle remained a seesaw, appropriate for an era with several strong players, none of them able to fully solve the others. Between October 1998 and May 2000, Davenport snatched the top spot from Hingis four times. After Capriati crashed the party, Lindsay grabbed it a fifth time in late 2001.
The second half of Davenport’s career, after the turn of the century, was largely the Venus and Serena show–at least when the Williams sisters chose to play. Lindsay reclaimed the number one ranking in October 2004, battling Mauresmo, Sharapova, and Kim Clijsters for the distinction.
Across eight separate spans, she sat atop the ranking table for a total of 98 weeks, including the ends of the 1998, 2001, 2004, and 2005 seasons. After recording her third major title at the 2000 Australian Open, she never won another. Her status on the WTA computer was more dependent on consistency than dominance.
My historical Elo ratings are a bit more skeptical of players who maintained their position by racking up second-tier titles. The Elo formula gives Davenport only a couple dozen weeks at number one, including a single year-end crown, in 1999.
This isn’t a criticism; it’s just a bit of a reality check. When Elo disagrees with the WTA point tally, it knocks Lindsay down only one spot. At the end of 1998, she trailed Hingis by a modest 40 Elo points. The 1999 year-end list was even closer. Davenport clung to a five-point lead over Hingis, who held the same minuscule advantage over Serena Williams.
At the end of 2000, Davenport fell to fourth, but once again, there wasn’t much breathing room at the top. Behind Hingis and the Williams sisters, she was only 80 points away from the top. When the curtain fell on 2004, Elo rated Davenport one point behind Mauresmo–a tie in all but name.
It was a brutally tough era. Some of the best players of all time were at or near their peaks. If it looks like they weren’t, it’s only because the field was so crowded. Apart from 2002, when she was sidelined by a knee injury, Davenport was in the thick of it for a decade.
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With different priorities, better luck, and a healthy appetite for rehab, Lindsay could have lasted even longer.
In 2005, she pushed Serena to a third set in the Australian Open final. At Wimbledon, she held a championship point before falling to Venus in the final, 4-6, 7-6, 9-7. A back injury slowed her down late in that match and kept her off the circuit for most of the two months that followed. She still managed four more titles before the end of the year along with a semi-final showing at the year-end championships.
Alas, the back problems lingered. They limited Davenport to only 29 matches in 2006. She didn’t win any titles, only her second season-long drought since 1992. But there was no doubt she was still capable of astounding tennis. 3 of those 29 matches ended 6-0, 6-0 in Lindsay’s favor, one of them against top-20 player Elena Likhovtseva.
Only 30 years old, she could have rested her back and ultimately returned to the top of the game. Instead, she followed the “normal” path she had always sought and had a baby.
Still, life as a suburban mom could wait. She returned to the tour after a break of only twelve months. In a stop-and-start comeback slowed by a knee injury, she won 37 of 43 matches.
In the 2008 Memphis quarter-finals, Davenport drew the top prospect of a new era. 17-year-old Caroline Wozniacki would become the greatest retriever of her generation, but the American’s power was too much. After six games, the teenager sat down, wondering how to turn the tide in the second set. Even with a baby in tow, against a player barely half her age, Davenport could still dish out a bagel.