The Next Chris Evert?

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

The ancient Greeks promoted the ideal of the well-rounded person, a soundly trained mind in a soundly trained body, tempering ambition with recreation, mingling contemplation and combat. But then the Greeks didn't have endorsement contracts. It is all well and good to talk about waiting until one's eligibility -- uh, education -- is completed, but when an eighth-grader can sign sponsorship deals worth potentially $1 million a year, what's the real point of further schooling? It might provide some cultural grounding and social polish, but the purpose is plainly not to qualify for a well-paying job.

One wonders, for example, if the teachers at Palmer Academy in Wesley Chapel, Fla., felt just a little silly having homework assignments faxed to straight-A student Jennifer Capriati during a week when she earned $28,000 on the tennis court alone, probably more than some of those teachers make in a year. They will face that question again and again in months to come. Capriati, for anyone who missed the biggest media hoopla since the Donald Trump divorce scandal, is a sturdily built 5-ft. 6 1/2-in. 13-year-old with nerve, force and a powerful backhand -- plus a business manager, a press agent and a sometime coach named Billie Jean King. She is also, in the far-from- isolated judgment of veteran NBC tennis commentator Bud Collins, "the best American player since Billie Jean." That accolade puts her above the likes of Pam Shriver, Tracy Austin and Capriati's friend and role model, Chris Evert, the sport's winningest player of all time.

The invariable caution raised about allowing young players onto the professional tour is that they may be subject to premature burnout, either physical or mental. The prime examples cited are Austin, who twice won the U.S. Open before departing at 21, and Andrea Jaeger, who made the finals of the French Open and Wimbledon before packing it in at 19. Yet the counterexamples of enduring grit can be equally persuasive: Evert, who began playing at the top level at 16, kept going until her September retirement at the age of 34; her equally precocious rival, Martina Navratilova, 33, is still playing about as well as ever.

When Capriati was three, her father Stefano, a self-taught tennis pro who emigrated from Milan, put a racquet into her hands; by the time she was four, she was fending off barrages from a ball machine and was delivered into the tutelage of Jimmy Evert, whose most famous coaching product was his daughter Christine Marie. Last year Capriati won the 18-and-under titles at the French and U.S. Opens and made the junior quarterfinals at Wimbledon.

This month, in anticipation of her 14th birthday on March 29, she was allowed by the sport's elders to turn professional. Her debut attracted hundreds of print reporters and nearly a dozen TV crews. Neither the journalists nor the fans were disappointed. Capriati won five straight matches, knocking off players ranked tenth, 16th and 21st in the world before losing last week to No. 3, Gabriela Sabatini, in a close 6-4, 7-5 final. (Observers said the winner looked more scared than her tyro opponent.) This week Capriati is playing again in Florida. In May she will play the Italian Open, to the delight of her sportswear sponsor, Diadora of Caerano Di San Marco, near Venice, which is paying her a reported $3 million over the next few years to sport its wares. By then she will probably have earned enough ranking points to enter any tournament she chooses -- and may win. Says Capriati, an unusually polite and personable teen: "I have no fear. I was just born with that kind of mind." A champion's attitude, for sure, and something no school can teach.

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York