Getting to Know Patty Schnyder By Ed Toombs April 1998

    In early 1998 another player in her late teens, another "oldster" has emerged: Patty Schnyder. The 19-year-old Swiss has jumped into the top twenty, reaching a career-high of #17 in April of this year.

    For several years now, tennis connoisseurs have seen great potential in Schnyder, a left-hander from the northwestern Swiss city of Basel. Indeed, some were disappointed that she did not break through before 1998. Schnyder is an excellent athlete, a hard worker with penetrating shots, some creative flair and an all-court game.
 
    This year it appears that Patty, an avid piano player, has graduated from playing scales and may be ready to perform tennis sonatas on the women’s tour. Who is Patty Schnyder?

    The breakthrough for the blonde, cherubic-faced Swiss came in the southern hemisphere, in January 1998. There she won an Australian Open warm-up event in Tasmania, her first-ever WTA tournament win. Then in February Schnyder won an important tourney in Hannover, beating the redoubtable Jana Novotna in the final. Narrow, heart-breaking losses to Serena Williams at the Lipton and Monica Seles at Hilton Head have prevented her from advancing to the late rounds in recent weeks.

    Aside from her passion for the piano and her mastery of four languages (German, English, French and Spanish), several factors set Patty Schnyder apart from most of her fellow professionals. First, her left-handedness: I was told that Schnyder, Monica Seles and Florencia Labat were the only port-siders entered in the 96-player Lipton Championships field in 1998.

    Another almost-unique Schnyder trait: in person, Patty strikes one as polite, modest and reserved. Tennis fans who are increasingly weary of the boastful, strutting, rough-around-the-edges young female stars would find Patty a refreshing change. Perhaps she is too discreet for her own good, at least in tennis terms, according to a Swiss tennis reporter familiar with Schnyder. "It sometimes doesn’t look as if she sees her opponent as an adversary," he told me. "It’s as if she’s playing the ball and not her opponent."

    Of course, you would want the girl next door to be reserved and polite. Alas, at the elite level of professional sport, this characteristic can be a weakness. For example, Schnyder appears to let herself be mentally bullied by players who do not hesitate to employ time-honoured psychological ploys on the court. After a surprisingly lopsided 6-3, 6-1 defeat at the hands of Anna Kournikova at Amelia Island this year, Schnyder admitted to having been thrown off by stalling tactics she felt the young Russian was employing. "I was so angry on the court," she told reporters after the match. "It's just the way she acts. I was so upset I couldn't think of anything, my game or my tactics."

    Schnyder systematically downplays her expectations of herself, as if she doesn’t have the confidence that she can be as good as many observers think she can be. When asked late last year what her career taget was, she answered: "I always said that I would like to reach the top twenty of the world rankings. And more than ever I have the feeling that I can achieve that."

    She might have surprised herself more than anyone when she reached the top twenty just a few short months after making that pronouncement. Her revised goal? "To reach the top ten. It doesn't matter if it is this year, next year or two years. But I think I can make the top ten." How about a Grand Slam win, perhaps? "That’s an ambitious goal, a dream, not so realistic." What does she have to work on in her game? "There are a lot of things: my net game, my serves, also my groundstrokes. There's a lot of work to do."

    Is Patty Schnyder a realistic, second-rank player who knows her limitations, or a top-drawer talent who doubts herself excessively? Or alternatively, just an intelligent young woman who sets realistic goals to allow for gradual progress toward the fulfillment of her potential? Will she prove to be too low-key to be a major force on the tour, or become an Edberg-style "nice guy’s champ"? 

    We’re still getting to know Patty. As we further acquaint ourselves with "that other Swiss girl" in the coming months and years, her portrait will become clearer.
 

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