Capriati’s Return Is Aborted

PARIS —  Former child tennis standout Jennifer Capriati aborted a long-anticipated comeback at the Paris Open on Tuesday, saying she had strained a hip muscle during practice and was in too much pain to compete.

Looking unhappy and distracted during a surprise news conference in the basement of the Pierre de Coubertin sports stadium, Capriati said she was disappointed at being sidelined mere hours before she was to play Sabine Appelmans of Belgium.

“I was really looking forward to playing here,” she said. “It’s really unfortunate, having come all this way.”

Had Capriati competed, the match would have been her first since November 1994, when she participated in a tour event in Philadelphia. That competition was also billed as Capriati’s comeback--she hadn’t played a match since dropping off the tour after a first-round loss at the U.S. Open in September 1993--but she lost to Anke Huber in the first round and pulled back from competitive tennis.

Capriati was practicing Tuesday morning with Magdalena Maleeva of Bulgaria at a private tennis club in Paris when she was injured. In response to questions about the injury, she said she might have been susceptible because of her long absence from the sport.

“I guess when you haven’t been playing for a while, your muscles get very tight,” she said. “I was racing for a ball, and I just went too far. Maybe the muscle wasn’t completely warmed up.”

A trainer for the Women’s Tennis Assn., Kathy Martin, confirmed Capriati’s injury and said she will need treatment “for at least the next few days.” That left open the possibility of an appearance next week at the Nokia Grand Prix in Essen, Germany.

Capriati, repeatedly averting her gaze and twisting an earring as she spoke to reporters, said she remains eager to play again.

“I’ve missed my time on the tour,” she said. “I’ve missed playing. I’ve taken a long break, but now I’m ready to get back to it because it’s still inside of me.”

But she said she doesn’t know how long it will be before she is ready to play, saying, “I’m taking things one day at a time.”

Capriati turned pro at 13, reached the final of the first tournament she entered and embarked on a series of milestones: the youngest player seeded at Wimbledon, the youngest semifinalist at Wimbledon, the youngest semifinalist at the U.S. Open and so on.

By the time she was 16, Capriati had won an Olympic gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Games and been named by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s 40 highest-paid athletes.

But then something in Capriati apparently snapped under the pressure of always having to be the youngest and the best. After losing in the ’93 U.S. Open, she disappeared into her darkened bedroom for a week, then emerged and sank into a slide that included a well-publicized shoplifting citation, misdemeanor charges for possession of marijuana and two stints in mental-health and substance-abuse facilities.

Asked Tuesday evening whether there had been any particular event that motivated her to return, she replied that it had been a slow process.

Her attempted comeback “hasn’t been all of a sudden,” she said. “It’s been a long time. I’ve done everything I wanted to do, and I just found myself really missing [tennis]. The desire is in me, you know.”