Before we can land a full-time job as a journalist, many of us go the route of internships or writing freelance stories to pick up the necessary “clips” for our portfolio. After I graduated college, one of my first freelancing assignments was in Virginia Beach, Virginia, covering a national youth tennis tournament championship.
There barely was a crowd for the USTA Girls 16s National Clay Court Championships that July day in 1990 and I had never heard of the finalists — and no one else really had, either.
“It’s a national tournament and it’s here. … I just need about 12 inches from it,” the sports assignment editor told me.
The finals at the Virginia Beach Tennis and Country Club featured No. 2 seed Kori Davidson against No. 4 seed Lindsay Davenport, who had defeated top-seeded Jill Craybas 6-1, 6-4 in the semifinals.
When I got to the courts, one thing I noticed was Davenport, who had just turned 14, was 6-foot-2, which was 2 inches taller than me.
The other thing I noticed was that her height advantage and power were just too much for the smaller Davidson, and it was only a matter of time before Davenport wrapped up the title with a 6-3, 6-3 win.
Davidson told me this after the match:
“I didn’t play as well as I thought I could have, but I don’t think I could have done much else,” she said. “Her groundstrokes were on. … She just whaled winners from everywhere.”
Davenport was pretty humble after the match and gave me plenty of time, answering all my questions in a 1-on-1 setting on the bleachers.
“I hadn’t played that well before the tournament, so I might be playing my strongest tennis now,” she told me.
Like every USTA national champion, Davenport earned two pendant-sized gold balls for her singles and doubles victories (she teamed with Ditta Huber to win doubles).
I filed the story and saved it in a scrapbook along with every other story I’ve written during my career. I didn’t think much of it until seven years later when I was watching the U.S. Open semifinals. I’m thinking to myself watching this woman volley against Martina Hingis, “Lindsay Davenport … wait, that name sounds so familiar.”
And even though I am not a tennis expert, I recognized Davenport’s style of play. She was playing the same way she did seven years earlier, using her height and powerful serve to her advantage. She was an aggressive baseliner and she hit winners both crosscourt and down the line against Hingis, who eventually won the match.
I looked back at my scrapbook and, yep, that was definitely Lindsay Davenport.
The next year, Davenport won the title by defeating Venus Williams in the semifinals and Hingis in the finals. And she followed that up with a coveted Wimbledon plate in 1999, beating Steffi Graf for the championship.
All total, Davenport, now 49, won 55 WTA Tour-level singles titles, including three majors, the gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the 1999 Tour Finals.
She was ranked No. 1 in the world for 98 weeks and amassed career-earnings of $22,166,338 (a lot more than what I have made during the same time span as a journalist, but hey, we both love what we do!)
Our paths only crossed for a couple of hours that day 35 years ago, but I always rooted for Davenport when I saw her competing on the international stage. You kind of always feel a sort of kinship to someone when you “knew them when they were young.”
I don’t know if Davenport still has her gold tennis balls, but I still have the story I wrote from that day and it makes me smile whenever I read it again.
James Coleman is a journalist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at jcoleman@pbpost.com and follow him on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @JimColeman11. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: My first journalism piece: The hints of Lindsay Davenport’s stardom
