“She came to me at 10 years old. She had great fundamentals by the late great Jimmy Evert, low center of gravity, racquet back in the parking lot, the ball was on a string. She was like a little machine. But she played like Chris Evert,” legendary Hall of Famer tennis coach Rick Macci had said about one of his prodigies, recalling the time when he first saw her. Surely you are thinking that we are talking about Venus or Serena Williams? Wait a minute.

Yes, it is true that looking at the Williams sisters playing, Macci is famously known to have said to their father, Richard, “You got the next female Michael Jordan on your hand,” and Richard replied, “No, brother man, I got the next two.” But despite that, if Macci has to pick his best tennis player among the 12-year-olds he has coached, he keeps that Chris Evert carbon copy ahead of Venus and Serena.

In an X post on November 27, revealing that Macci wrote, “Was asked who was the best player at 12 years old I coached? Venus Serena Sharapova Kenin or Capriati. Believe it or not it is not even close as the JENERATOR JENNIFER CAPRIATI at age 12/ 5 .4 /107 LBS was Number One in the U.S but in the Girls 18 and Under. WHOA. @JenCapriati”

Probably one reason why Capriati’s style resembled so much to Chris was because the former was coached by Chris’ father Jimmy since she was four and a half years old. Interestingly, Jen was a standout for Jimmy as well. Jimmy had made it a point not to coach children below five years of age until he saw Jen. “My dad finally came home one day and said, ‘This little girl has it’,” Chris Evert had said in a 1990 interview referring to Jen. Nevertheless, Macci was not completely spellbound looking at Jen’s similarity to Chris.

In fact, Macci highlighted Jen’s return positioning of standing way behind the baseline, a skiddy serve, and a side-spinning forehand. “Nothing bad about Chris, if you’re mentally like Chris, that’s a good thing. But she (Capriati) stood way far back, side spin on her forehand, two-handed backhand was money, the serve that just skidded in,” Macci had said on The Functional Tennis Podcast last year. Alongside, he did not want Jen to become the next Chris Evert, and for good reasons.

“You know, I’m seeing this Seles girl [Monica Seles] over at IMG Academy and I know what’s coming. In the 90s, the game started to change, the racquets, the technology,” Macci pointed out. So he called Jen’s father Stefano and let him know that he wanted the little girl to become the “Next Jennifer Capriati,” and not the Next Chris Evert. Therefore, he started to shape her to become that one and only.

Macci made changes to Jen’s playing style. He asked her to play more from the baseline. He also worked on her forehand and serve. “So I got her on the baseline, I changed her forehand so she could grab it instead of coming across it, and I turned her serve so she got to hit it at like 113 (mph), because her serve was brutal and I had to loosen her up,” Macci explained. With all that, the coach had made a prediction about Capriati even before she entered her teens.

“She was the ‘tin-man’, I turned her into the ‘scare-crow’, so I got a lot of mileage out of that. But mentally, she had it. I’m on record (when she was) 12, saying that she’ll be number one in the world,” Macci said. Well, that did not just remain a prediction. After becoming a Pro at just 13, at the age of 14 years 235 days in 1990, Jen became the youngest top-10 player (No. 8) in tennis history. She earned the World No. 1 ranking in October 2001, a slot she held for 18 weeks. By that time, she had also become an Olympic gold medalist defeating No. 2 seed Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario and No. 1 seed Steffi Graf in Barcelona, 1992.

Speaking about her head-to-head rivalry against the Williams sisters, Capriati faced Serena Williams 17 times. Out of which, Serena won in 10. In the final meeting, however, Capriati emerged victorious. Playing against Williams in the 2004 US Open QF, she beat her after trailing in the first set with a scoreline of 2-6, 6-4, 6-4. However, against Venus, Capriati couldn’t take a single win in the four times she faced her. Coming back to Rick’s admiration for Jennifer, it is not the first time that he has done it.

Serena Williams’ ex-coach identified Capriati’s talent

Although he has coached Serena and Venus, alongside the likes of Maria Sharapova and Sofia Kenin, Rick’s favorite is Jennifer Capriati. And there’s a simple reason for that. Back in 2021, in an exclusive YouTube video on his channel, dated November 23, the Hall of Famer named Capriati as one of his favorite students.

“Jennifer Capriati is one of my favorite students of all time. She came to me as a ten-year-old and right away I knew that she could be one of the best players in the world,” he said. Giving the reason, he added, “She had amazing balance and good fundamentals.”

He also admired her strengths at a time when she was struggling due to injuries back in the early 2000s. After making a comeback in 2001, she went on to clinch the French Open and the Australian Open. “To become No.1 in the world, to become a Top-10 player aged 14 and then come back after a hiccup to win two Grand Slams. Forget the mental fortitude. She had firepower,” he said, “She had all the weapons to go right back in the field and play through anybody. All that started when she was 10-years-old,” he concluded.

What do you have to say about Rick’s remarks on Jennifer? Do you also believe she was more talented than Serena? Let us know in the comments below.