They had been playing tennis tournaments for more than a century in New York, Paris and Wimbledon, England, when a 14-year-old American girl announced herself in 1990. At the French Open, Jennifer Capriati became the youngest player ever to reach a Grand Slam semifinal. It was a powerful piece of history that suggested -- guaranteed, in many minds -- a limitless future.

	Jennifer Capriati is reaping the riches after winning two Grand Slam event titles this year.

And yet, over the next 11 years Capriati would never surpass that first flicker of greatness. Instead, the opposite came to pass: a competitive burnout, anger and rebellion and a dark period of five years without a title -- all under the gaze of the unblinking public eye.

Somehow, Capriati found it in herself to persevere. She gratefully accepted wildcards into tournaments and, more often than not, played qualifiers on the outside courts. She learned to live with people's patronizing pity and the annoying way they referred to her in the past tense -- as if she wasn't even playing anymore. Slowly, painfully, she rebuilt herself into an effective player and now stands at the midpoint of only the fourth Grand Slam run in women's tennis.

"It's a magnificent story," tennis analyst Mary Carillo said from her Florida home. "Look, I never figured Capriati for this. I never figured it. I was dead wrong, not for the first time in my pointy-headed career, but her new popularity isn't surprising. As Jennifer says of herself, 'A lot of people can relate to me.' "

There were markers along the way for those who cared to see them, but few people outside the game were prepared for what happened in Melbourne, Australia, on Jan. 27. Two months shy of her 25th birthday -- doddering by the standards of women's tennis -- Capriati defeated top-ranked Martina Hingis in straight sets to capture her first Grand Slam championship.

Just over four months later, Capriati was back where she debuted in the semifinals at the French Open.

"I guess it's been a long time," Capriati said before that back-to-the-future match against Hingis. "I never knew, since the semifinals when I got here at 14, if it would ever come again. It wasn't looking that way, like, a few years ago?

"I just remember that it came very easy back then. It's not that I didn't work for it back then, but I really had to work for it this time."

Perhaps, but it looked almost too easy when Capriati dismantled Hingis with precisely the same 6-4, 6-3 result she rendered in Australia.

"Right now, I just want to scream at the top of my lungs, I'm so excited," Capriati said afterward. "I just want to jump out right now. I'm just really excited."

Just as her former teenage Valley Speak occasionally surfaces with the phrases "like" and "you know" and "I mean," Capriati sometimes lapses into that giddy youthful mindset. It remains a source of strength and, sometimes, of weakness.

Facing 18-year-old Belgian Kim Clijsters in the French Open final on June 8, Capriati appeared at the outset to be the more inexperienced player. The three-set, 141-minute match that ensued did more than mark her as a great champion; it neatly framed her helter-skelter career in three separate but distinct acts.

Act I: Down and seemingly out
A prohibitive favorite in only her second consecutive Grand Slam final of the year, Capriati is nervous on Philippe Chatrier Court. Her new-found concentration is broken by, of all things, the chair umpire's microphone. "I can't play with that microphone," she squawks. "Are you kidding me? Turn that thing off." Later, the

	Jennifer Capriati has learned to overcome adversity and now finds reason to celebrate on the tennis court.

large contingent of loud Belgian fans sets her off. Clijsters dominates play with an array of muscular groundstrokes. Capriati makes 25 unforced errors and, after winning the first game of the match, loses six straight games and the set, 1-6.

Including her auspicious debut at the 1990 French Open, Capriati played in 14 Grand Slam tournaments through the 1993 U.S. Open. She reached at least the fourth round in 12 of those events, a testament to her remarkable consistency. The two misses were the 1992 and 1993 U.S. Opens, perhaps an indication that the long tennis seasons were wearing on her. She was bounced in the first round of the '93 Open, and when she tossed her racket into the wastebasket in the locker room, it was more than a symbolic gesture. The racket she would raise for the next several years had nothing to do with tennis.

She was paid some $6 million in endorsement deals as a 13-year-old, but it didn't buy her happiness. Neither did her unprecedented top-10 ranking. She won the 1992 Olympic gold medal for singles play at Barcelona, beating Steffi Graf in a rousing three-set final, but what followed were hardly her expected golden years.

Capriati, feeling the pressure to satisfy sponsors and constantly deliver on the expectations placed upon her, shut down. Unstrung by the breakup of her parents, Stefano and Denise, she stopped playing tennis. That had to be especially horrifying to Stefano, her longtime coach. At 17, she began to act out in ways that must have felt liberating. She drank, she did drugs, she let her 5-foot-8½, 135-pound frame go soft.

In December 1993, Capriati was arrested for shoplifting a modest ring from a store in a Tampa, Fla., mall. Five months later, police busted in on an impromptu party at a $50-a-night motel in Coral Gables with two drifters. She was arrested for misdemeanor marijuana possession. The black-and-white prison mug shot of Capriati, complete with a nose ring, was a chilling image flashed all around the world. A 23-day stay in a drug rehabilitation facility followed.

Unforced errors to the uninitiated perhaps, but what if it was your life that exploded like a comet? Before your personality and any kind of world view were fully formed? Unforced errors, in tennis and in life, are a highly subjective enterprise.

Capriati acknowledges this period in her life but, understandably, refuses to go into detail.

	“	There was a time when I was depressed about things. Everything seemed so negative and was going against me. ... As soon as you realize it's part of life, it makes it easier to cope with. It's not all daisies here. ”
		— Capriati on coping with the ups and downs in life

"There was a time when I was depressed about things," she has said. "Everything seemed so negative and was going against me. It depends on how you look at it. Even now, you can look at the world as being a pretty terrible place. You turn on the news and that's all there is. It's just your perspective.

"As soon as you realize it's part of life, it makes it easier to cope with. It's not all daisies here."

It wasn't until November 1994 that she surfaced after a 14-month absence in Philadelphia, where she lost a sloppy first-round match. After two years out of the rankings entirely, Capriati returned in February 1996 for a tournament in Essen, Germany, where she reached the quarterfinals. She finished the year ranked No. 24, but her heart, obviously, was not entirely in it. In her mind, she still wondered if she was worthy of all the success she had once achieved.

"I'm sure there were moments in the dark period where she did pack it in, that she believed she would never play tennis again," said Pam Shriver, the former top 10 player and ESPN analyst. "She was just trying to put the pieces together of a life that wasn't filled with anger and resentment. No one knows about the dark times but Jennifer, but you sort of get an inkling."

Says Capriati: "It was very difficult at times, mentally and physically. I was trying to figure out things on my own. Everyone has to have their own experiences, especially someone as strong-minded as me."

Act II: The long climb
Capriati loses the first game of the second set and changes rackets. Her serve, never her best weapon, bails her out in the second game. She hits two service winners to hold for 1-all, then breaks Clijsters at 2-all (the young Belgian's nerves are

	Though she has struggled at times, Jennifer Capriati has persevered to capture the Australian Open and French Open titles.

evident when she sprays a forehand long) and hits two more service winners for a 4-2 lead. Capriati holds twice more and survives, barely, 6-4.

Mary Joe Fernandez was Capriati's roommate at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Courage, she remembers, was never an issue.

"I saw signs of that this year in Berlin," Fernandez said earlier this month from her Florida home. "She was not playing great, kind of streaky and a little bit erratic. But she found ways to win. Pam [Shriver] and I said it, 'It's a sign of a champion, not playing your best and still managing to win.'

"That was the kind of effort that got her back to the top."

Progress, after that second comeback, was slow. Her ranking slid to No. 66 in 1997 and to No. 101 in 1998. Still, she reached two finals, in Chicago and Sydney. And off the court, she was beginning to see the world more clearly.

"I realized a lot of things by myself and worked them out," Capriati said after the 2000 Australian Open. "I am no longer afraid of the world and don't look at it as a dark, scary place.

"I had to make the decision of where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I didn't want to give up [tennis] completely, but if I was going to [come back], I was going to do it the right way or not at all."

From 1994-98, Capriati won only a single Grand Slam match. In 1999, she was encouraged after winning her first-round match at the Australian Open but knew she needed to work harder. She asked Harold Solomon to be her coach. What, he asked her, do you want to accomplish?

	“	If I could ever, ever get anywhere near the top 20, I'd be the happiest girl of all time. ”
		— Capriati, who is now rated No. 4 on the WTA Tour, said after the 1999 Australian Open

"If I could ever, ever get anywhere near the top 20, I'd be the happiest girl of all time," she told him.

Solomon was impressed with her sincerity and took the job. Capriati always had been blessed with grit and resolve, but her physical conditioning wasn't merely suspect -- it was almost nonexistent. Karen Burnett, a trainer who runs an aerobics program where Capriati's mother lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., entered the daily routine. Capriati ultimately shed nearly 30 pounds and started moving better along the baseline she once commanded.

In May 1999, she won on the clay in Strasbourg, France, for her first title in six years. Her win over Nathalie Tauziat in the quarterfinals was her first victory against a top 10 player in two years. She also would win in Quebec City, but it was a tearful outburst at the U.S. Open that reminded everyone that Capriati still nursed a fragile psyche. Comebacks, by definition, are returns from the depths. With her success came the obvious questions about the five-year black hole in her resume. She fled a press conference and later issued a statement that reeked of the immaturity that had defined her early days on the Tour.

"I made mistakes and, yes, I am to blame and no one else," it said in part.

The year 2000 brought incremental progress on the court and a love interest off it: ponytailed Belgian player Xavier Malisse. Capriati reached the semifinals of the Australian Open, but Solomon left when her focus began to waver. Malisse, it seemed, was sometimes more important than practice. Stefano, who had once guided his daughter to the brink of the tennis elite, again became her coach.

"It seemed the kid was drifting around," Carillo said. "When she dropped Harold Solomon as a coach, I thought it was a major error. It seemed like 'Oh, [shoot], she'll be rudderless again. But she righted herself. I think you have to give her father a lot of credit for that.

"I think he really resented it when all the other coaches got credit for her success over the years. But he made it happen this time. He really did bring the kid along."

Injuries, including a slight tear of her Achilles tendon, limited Capriati's ability to work out and she finished the year ranked No. 14. It was the top 20 ranking she had dreamed of but, oddly enough, it didn't make her as happy as she had imagined.

After the season-ending tournament in New York, Capriati decided to end her relationship with Malisse. From that point on, she said, tennis would be the most important thing.

"It was personal and a little bit of that, too," Capriati said at the time. "Tennis has got to be the main thing now. I figure all that stuff can come later on. Of course you can't be focused on one thing if you're with somebody else or your heart is somewhere else half of the time.

"You've got to be very selfish in this game. Not in a bad way -- you've just got to focus on yourself."

Act III: Reaching the summit
Tie-breakers are too frivolous a convention for the fifth and ultimate set of a Grand Slam event. That's why they play on. Capriati finds herself locked in a tenacious struggle with Clijsters, who displays astonishing poise in her first finals appearance. They soldier on, with Capriati breaking Clijsters for a 7-6 lead. Clijsters

	Jennifer Capriati seals her second straight Grand Slam title with a kiss.

breaks back, to level the match at 7-all. Twice a mere two points from the match, Clijsters cannot finish the deal. Capriati breaks again to take a 10-9 lead, but Clijsters answers with a forehand that clips the net and bounces over Capriati's shoulder. Capriati's overhead smash breaks Clijsters again and gives her a 11-10 lead. Before she serves out the match, the crowd erupts into its first wave of the day. Her father Stefano is part of the rising humanity. Capriati steels herself and serves out the match, twice rushing to net. A final forehand winner sends her skipping willy-nilly to net, like the 14-year-old she once was.

"I saw her face after she won Roland Garros," said Anne Worcester, former CEO of the WTA Tour and tournament director for Pilot Pen tournament in New Haven, Conn. "You would have thought she was getting married or having a baby -- she was radiant.

"That's why people are rooting for her."

As wonderful a moment as the French Open was, Capriati found her critical mass five months earlier in the Australian Open. Beating Hingis, the world's No. 1 player, in the final for her first major championship was the pinnacle.

"Who would have thought I would ever make it here?" Capriati asked in a tone that suggested she was among the doubters. "Dreams do come true. You have to believe in yourself."

Shriver insists that Capriati's breakthrough performance, given her steady climb in 1999 and 2000 was hardly shocking.

"I don't consider it such a mega-leap, actually," Shriver said. "She had been making steady progress. Once she got to the semifinals of a major [the 2000 Australian], it isn't that big a jump to be beating the top players.

"But winning the Australian Open this year was the defining moment. Once she crossed that barrier, her confidence soared. She knows she can do it."

Capriati was among those who noticed the immediate change.

"I think after today and after what's happened, I'm no longer going to doubt myself in anything," she said after the match. "I will never be afraid of any match I go into."

There have been the predictable setbacks. Capriati held eight match points against Venus Williams in the Ericsson Open final, yet managed to lose. She double-faulted on match point at 5-3 in the second set in her French Open quarterfinal this year against Serena Williams and lost five straight games. She prevailed in the third set, winning six of eight games.

Capriati is ranked No. 4 on the Sanex WTA Tour, behind Hingis, Venus Williams and Lindsay Davenport, but there is no question -- even in their minds -- who the best player has been so far this year. With two majors in hand and two left to play for, Capriati is trying to become only the fourth woman to win the Grand Slam; Graf was the last to do it, in 1988.

	“	She overwhelmed me at times. She's the most consistent, the hottest player on the tour. ”
		— Martini Hingis on Capriati's rise up the WTA Tour rankings

"She overwhelmed me at times," Hingis said after losing to Capriati in the French semifinals. "She's the most consistent, the hottest player on the tour."

With a 14-0 record in the two previous majors, Capriati is the clear favorite at Wimbledon, which begins on Monday. The scary thing? The soft, red clay of Roland Garros is the surface least friendly to Capriati's hard-and-harder game; the slick grass at Wimbledon and the hard courts at the U.S. Open will be more to her liking.

Fitness, according to the experts, is what separates her from the game's other big hitters.

"I wish Martina Hingis looked like Capriati did right now," Carillo said. "She has that look of the boy-crazy teenager. Jennifer wins so many locker-room points these days cause she's so fit. She's still hitting hard, low-percentage shots -- flat and going for the lines. But fitness makes you look so much smarter. Like Agassi, she's hitting good shots from good positions that for others are bad shots from bad positions."

Can Capriati win the Grand Slam? Can she stay on top of the game in her middle and late 20s? Fernandez, for one, thinks so.

"I think it's a mistake when people say if you don't make it by the time you're 20," Fernandez said. "Chris Evert said she peaked at 26, 27. She knew more about the game, just like Jennifer does. There's no reason why someone can't come into their own in their 20s.

"When she won the Australian Open, that was the big question -- Could she keep it up? -- and she's answered that. Her eagerness is there, the determination is there. The more she wins, the more she wants to win more."

Capriati's story, of course, is the stuff of Hollywood. But she remains naturally shy and uncomfortable with all the attention.

"I don't get into that whole bad-girl-makes-good hype," she said after winning the French Open. "I just hope people who are down or don't feel good about themselves can see this and use it as inspiration."

As Carillo points out, Capriati has come full circle.

"She grew up with tennis as her total identity and came to resent that," Carillo said. "Now, she says, 'Hey, I'm good at this. I want to be a tennis player.' Playing tennis obviously makes her a happier person."

At the French Open, her mother Denise said: "The happier Jennifer is with her life, the better her tennis is."

And now that Capriati has found herself, her tennis is returning the favor.

	“	I am in control. That's the difference these days. There are still ups and downs, of course, like with anybody. Not every day is going to be perfect. I can make anything happen, whatever. ”
		— Capriati on regaining control of her life and tennis form

"I am in control. That's the difference these days," Capriati says. "There are still ups and downs, of course, like with anybody. Not every day is going to be perfect. I can make anything happen, whatever."

Anything, apparently.

After Capriati won the Australian Open she, her father and brother Steven flew back to Tampa, the nearest airport to the Saddlebrook Resort community where they share a home. Waiting for them was her mother, who lives four hours away. After hugging her daughter, Denise turned and hugged Stefano -- for the first time in years.

"Seeing how she's playing doesn't make me happy," Stefano said. "It's part of the job, but life is not only tennis. What makes me happy is when I really see Jennifer happy. Only parents know when there is a bright smile for photo shoots. Now, her smile is for real."

Greg Garber is a Senior Writer for ESPN.com.