Capriati's burden of expectation

Not since Monica Seles came to Wimbledon nine years ago as Australian and French Open champion has a player arrived at the third of tennis' Grand Slam tournaments with the chance of completing a pure Grand Slam, but Jennifer Capriati carries the opportunity and burden of being in that position this year.

To many, it is premature to talk of a pure Grand Slam at only the halfway stage, and especially when the computer rankings of the Sanex WTA Tour don't even show the 25-year-old American as world No 1 (at least not yet, they are likely to soon). But it's not just the thought of the already impressive Hollywood film-script becoming even more gilded that is making people believe Capriati could do it. There are sound tennis reasons, too.

Seles came to Wimbledon knowing grass was the one Slam she had never won and would be the most difficult to win. At the time, only Chris Evert had ever won the women's singles with a two-handed backhand, and Seles was double-fisted off both wings. The lowness of the bounce meant she would have to do more stretching and bending than most of her main rivals, notably Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova.

Seles's supreme confidence carried her through an epic three-set semi-final against Navratilova, but her dream – in retrospect, her last realistic chance of achieving the Grand Slam, given the stabbing she suffered 10 months later – came to grief on a showery Saturday afternoon when Graf beat her in a 58-minute final played in four episodes over nearly seven hours.

Martina Hingis also came mightily close in 1997, when she won three majors and lost in the final of the fourth. Yet losing to Iva Majoli in Paris killed off talk of the Grand Slam early on, and only with hindsight is it clear how close she came.

But Capriati already has the tricky one behind her. When she beat Kim Clijsters in one of the most absorbing Roland Garros finals for years, she said: "I never believed I could win the French, I thought this would be the last of the ones, that I would win Wimbledon or the US Open first."

In terms of confidence, Capriati is streets ahead of the pack, but she also has a proven track record on grass. In 1990 as Wimbledon's youngest-ever seed (14 years, three months) she reached the fourth round, and a year later she beat Navratilova in the quarter-finals. The nine-times champion may have been 34, but Capriati's achievement stands out when one remembers that Navratilova had enough grass-court nous to reach the final, three years later. Capriati reached the quarter-finals in 1992 and 1993, but her fourth round win over Lisa Raymond – 8-6 in the third set – was to be her last Grand Slam victory before her life went so publicly off the rails in 1994.

Since being back regularly on the circuit, she has not over-impressed at Wimbledon, where her best came in reaching the fourth round last year. But apart from reaching the semi-finals at the 2000 Australian Open, nothing at any event until this year came near her achievements of the early 1990s.

Two things suggest Capriati has the game to win Wimbledon. Firstly, the draw has been reasonably kind to her. She will not hit a serious threat until Serena Williams in the quarter-finals, and she beat the younger Williams sister at the same stage at the French. Then, according to the seedings, would come Hingis, whom she has beaten in all their three matches this year, with a final against (presumably) Amelie Mauresmo, Venus Williams or Lindsay Davenport to follow.

Secondly, she differs from many of her fellow professionals in the way she plays her forehand. The increasingly exaggerated western grip favoured by numerous players is fine for getting extra power and whip on courts where the ball bounces regularly to a reasonable height, but on surfaces like grass, where it keeps low, the need to come under the ball to get good contact becomes something of a liability, and it could undermine the Wimbledon hopes of players such as Mauresmo and Justine Henin who have exaggerated forehand grips.

By contrast, Capriati hits the ball much flatter. Not only is her grip less exaggerated but, if the grass stays moderately soft, the ball will skid off it more effectively from a flat shot than a looped one. In addition, her basic serve has a ball-toss wide to her right, which allows for some slice and is effective on grass.

Stacked against Capriati is not just a collection of dangerous opponents who reflect the most competitive era yet seen in the top 10 of women's tennis, but also the fact that only three women have ever won all four majors in the same year: Maureen Connolly (1953), Margaret Court (1970) and Steffi Graf (1988).

The term "Grand Slam" came from bridge and was coined in tennis by the New York Times, writing about Donald Budge closing in on the 1938 US Nationals title (the forerunner of the US Open). The term stuck, and, though it was never specified that it had to be in the same year, that was always a given.

The strength in depth of women's tennis may still not be quite developed enough to prevent a woman achieving a pure Grand Slam but, with the women's game getting steadily more competitive, Capriati might be the last with a realistic chance of achieving it.

For Capriati to be grouped with Connolly, Court and Graf would be an achievement that at present still seems a little premature. Those three have 55 Grand Slam singles titles between them, whereas Capriati's Australian Open title in January was her first. And indeed her Grand Slam dream could wither sometime in the next 10 days, and the history books remain untouched. But the great thing is that Capriati has gained such a sense of perspective from her personal troubles that if she never won another major she would still be happy.