ITF

ITF World Spring 2020 11 walk out on the court. I remember telling my mum that 'I don't belong here' – I couldn't believe it was happening. "My mum was an amazing tennis mum and just shrugged her shoulders and said 'well, you are here so you'd better get out there'." By her 21st birthday, she was an Olympic champion after triumphing in Atlanta, although the modern-day Davenport would have a compelling message for her younger self. "I always wish I could go back to my 16-21-year-old self," she said. "It is so abnormal to be at the top of your career, not just your sport but career, and to have the mentality of someone who should be in college or of a teenager. "Sometimes I wish I could have those years back to say, 'you have this number of years left so bust your bum for this amount of time'. "It all came a little bit easy for me in the beginning and I really learned at about 22 and thought 'wow, if I am going to make any sort of impact in the sport, I have to up my game two or three times in terms of commitment'." In 1998, two years following her Olympic heroics, she claimed the first Grand Slam title of her career after dispatching Switzerland's Martina Hingis in New York. That year she reached at least the quarter-finals of all four majors and was duly named an ITF World Champion, while she claimed a Grand Slam title in each of the next two seasons – at Wimbledon in 1999 and the Australian Open in 2000. Despite having huge success at such a young age and the world seemingly at her feet, Davenport's career was not free from hurdles, whether physical or psychological, to overcome. "Every tennis player, every athlete and every champion has an insane amount of challenges," said Davenport, who was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2014. "Some of them are physical and others mental. I felt that I had my fair share. "The hardest one for me to overcome was the self-doubt and how hard it was for me to believe that I was actually good enough, belonged and could reach the pinnacle of our sport. "I used to stress about not winning a game in a big match. It sounds so absurd now but it felt so real at the time and it took me a lot of years and a lot of losses in a lot of matches that were close and didn't go my way." Fortunately, a vast number of matches did go her way, enough for her to hold the world No. 1 ranking for 98 weeks and the year- end No. 1 spot on four occasions. It all adds up to a stunning career. Davenport was quite the player, and she is quite the role model. n

• Cover