Now What, Jennifer?

It was a little sad to read of the recent defeat of Jennifer Capriati in the US Open. Ms Capriati lost in the fourth round to Monica Seles, and there was much harking back in the media to their famous match in the semi-finals of the same competition eight years ago, possibly the best women's match of all time (which Seles also won, albeit in a tense final-set tie-break)

Capriati is, of course, famous for what is politely called her turbulent past, and just after her recent defeat by Seles she broke down in tears while reading a confessional statement about her wild teenage years, when her career collapsed amid stories of drug abuse and shoplifting: "The path I took for a brief period of my life was not of reckless drug use, hurting others. . .it was a path of quiet rebellion, a little experimentation of a darker side of my confusion in a confusing world. . ." (And so on, to sympathetic Irish cries of "Musha, God love her" from the back of the hall).

Capriati revealed she had written the statement before the tournament began because she was sick of being asked questions about her past. In the best Californian tradition she then apologised to her family, her friends, her fans and the world: "But I feel like I've started a new life and I need to leave the past behind".

She then requested that future interviews would "focus on the now".

We in the sporting press would like to accommodate Jennifer, but it could be tricky. To start with, there is the niggling doubt regarding how something in the future, such as an interview, can focus on the now. Does she perhaps mean. . .the then? And as Tommy Eliot remarked during a lull in a dinner-party conversation a few years back, time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.

Without getting into the deep water of the here-and-now, the then-there-was, the will-be wouldbe might-have-been and the ah-Jaysus-those-were-the-days symphony of time, what I think he meant was that you can't separate the days (never mind the nights) at all, so that to "focus on the now" is a chronological and spatial impossibility.

Sorry about that, Jennifer.

On the other hand, when a reporter at a press conference asks the existential question, "What now?" the answer he gets will be about what's next, and everybody understands that, even soccer managers.

The odd thing is that while Capriati was exiting the US Open, and urging us all to forget about her past, her compatriot Andre Agassi was blazing ahead in the competition, and openly assisting the media in contrasting his then with his now. It is not long since Agassi's career was in the doldrums and sympathetic sports media were naturally blaming his lack of form on the break-up of his marriage to Brooke Shields, with the underlying implications that it was probably her fault, which no doubt it was, Shields being only a sex siren while Agassi is a sex god.

In Agassi's case it is very hard to focus on his now when the man is clearly obsessed by his unattractive then - the junk food, the wodges of waistline fat, the allegedly faked injuries, his sartorial offences in the shorts and pirate bandana area, and his dumping by exasperated coach Nick Bollettieri. Agassi likes nothing better than to be reminded of all this, because, of course, he has (now) risen above it to undreamed-of wealth, a private jet and the predictable vulgar fleet of luxury cars.

Now, Agassi loves to look back at then: "The path I took for a brief period of my life was a path of quiet rebellion, a little experimentation of a darker side of my confusion in a confusing world."

Sorry, that was Capriati. What Agassi actually said some four years ago was: "Looking back, I was rewarded too quickly. I came at a time when tennis needed somebody. I had so much notoriety before I accomplished great things. For me to do the Nike commercials and the Canon stuff and never win a Grand Slam left me with a bad rap. All image, no substance."

Agassi is also one of those guys who cultivate the image of the battler and believe in a bit of early trial and trouble (but not, of course, at the time). "You have to learn the hard way before you can start living. I think I have."

Some day some eminent sports personality will confess that he or she came up the easy way, and all heaven will break loose.

But if Capriati ever gets back into the top echelons of tennis, it is likely that her past will return to haunt not her, but us. She will have discovered its advantages in terms of career promotion, and the bad girl image of her turbulent past will then only add to the sheen of her glittering now. We will not hear the end of it, not now, not then, not ever.