Dateline: 4/23/01

Jennifer Capriati defeated Martina Hingis 6-0, 4-6, 6-4 in Sunday's Family Circle Cup final. At this point, it's safe to add Capriati to the short, but growing, list of players who can give Hingis real trouble by overpowering her. Capriati prevailed in their one previous meeting this year too, the Australian Open final.

Capriati generally hits her groundstrokes flatter and harder than Hingis, and when Capriati is accurate, she's deadly. The tradeoff, though, is that her clearance over the net is small. Watching their match Sunday, you could easily observe the difference in the average height above the net for the two players. You may have also noted that when Capriati missed, it was often into the net.

Hingis hit the net less frequently than Capriati, but what she gave up for greater net clearance was more time for Capriati to get to those shots. When Hingis really wanted to make Capriati scramble, she had to flatten the ball out, clearing the net by a smaller margin.

During the first set, Hingis probably opted for the safer net margin too often. Seeming always on the defensive, playing from well behind her baseline, she let Capriati dictate the points, and she lost the set in a quick 19 minutes. Capriati's depth, power, and angles proved too much for Hingis, who often caught the ball late, hitting wide.

At the start of the second set, though, Hingis started stepping forward and hitting more aggressively, and she jumped out to a 3-0 lead. Capriati has become surprisingly quick, and she came up with some spectacular conversions where she ran down what should have been a Hingis winner and replied with an even better shot. The quality of play from both ends of the court became quite elevated as the two players traded momentum. Capriati won four games in a row to reach 4-3, then Hingis won the next three to take the set.

The third set continued the streaky scoring pattern, with Capriati going up 5-1, then Hingis recovering to 4-5 before Capriati put it away.

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