Lindsay Davenport: Tennis Champion And Mother
By Ken Miller, Lawn Tennis Correspondent, Posted: Sunday, May 11, 2008 11:25am CST USA
Lindsay Davenport with son Jagger Leach
(lawntennismag.com) - I first saw Lindsay Davenport of the USA play tennis right after she turned professional in the early nineties. I thought
she could be a great player should she reach her best physical fitness which she soon did in the later years.
Davenport would win three grand
slam tournaments all before age 30 when she would give birth to her son Jagger.
On this Mother's Day we pay tribute to Davenport, a tennis
champion and a mother.
"I think just having a baby and having something so much more important than your career and your life puts more perspective than necessarily
the pregnancy or anything like that," Davenport said. "Tennis does seem so minor in my life now. Obviously my career is hugely important
to me but you know,
life revolves around my son and his well being. And if that cooperates, and it allows me to play tennis, then so far so good."
Davenport at 6 feet, 2 1/2 inches tall throughout her tennis career used her height to her advantage to strike one of the cleanest, most
powerful balls on the WTA Tour. With punishing groundstrokes, Davenport took Olympic gold at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and reached the
world number one ranking in tennis the following year.
In 1998 Davenport won the US Open and won Wimbledon in 1999 and 2000. One of several records Davenport holds is she leads the all
time WTA Tour career prize money won with $22,050,839 in winnings.
Only two years after she'd finished as the number one ranked tennis player in the world in 2005, Davenport gave birth to her child, Jagger
Jonathan Leach, on Sunday, June 10, 2007.
"I think just having a baby and having something so much more important than your career and your life puts more perspective than necessarily
the pregnancy or anything like that," Davenport said. "Tennis does seem so minor in my life now. Obviously my career is hugely important
to me but you know,
life revolves around my son and his well being. And if that cooperates, and it allows me to play tennis, then so far so good."
In her surprise return to tennis after giving birth, Davenport has taken four titles: Bali, Quebec City, Auckland and Memphis.
