Jennifer Capriati, who burst into the public consciousness as a gum-chomping, ground-stroke-blasting prodigy, is in the throes of a professional athlete's equivalent of a midlife crisis. She has been immobilized by a landslide of questions triggered by her injury.
"You don't know what's your driving force," Capriati said. "Is it sponsors, pressure, money, self-worth? Or is it that you really love the game so much that you can't be away from it?"
Capriati, 30, who has won $10 million in prize money and three Grand Slam titles, had her shoulder operated on in January of last year and again in June. Instead of traveling the tennis circuit, she is making the rounds of doctors.
"I feel stuck," she said. "Sometimes I feel like this is another life already."
She said that she was constantly being asked when she would resume her tennis career. "Basically, I'm retired until I can play," Capriati said. "That's the easiest way to put it."
Her life is more complicated today than it was at the French Open five years ago, when she pulled out a three-set victory against Kim Clijsters in a riveting final on the red clay at Roland Garros.
Capriati, who had won the Australian Open earlier in the year, became the first woman since Monica Seles in 1992 to win the first two legs of the Grand Slam. On that day, she never felt more fit, more fulfilled.
The last time Capriati dropped out of sight, after losing in the first round of the 1993 U.S. Open as a 17-year-old, she resurfaced nine months later in a seedy Miami hotel room, where she had been using marijuana. She then spent 28 days in drug rehabilitation. Capriati knows that her past gives people reason to wonder if a relapse is not the reason for her latest disappearing act.
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