Game girl set for number one

Cold-ridden, maybe, but Marina Erakovic itches to be on the court punishing a tennis ball. Picture / Richard Robinson

The one thing everyone tells you about Marina Erakovic is that she possesses a quite remarkable poise for her age and that this has the effect of making her appear quite a bit older than her 16 years.

The one thing guaranteed to ruffle that poise is tell her what people say.

"Ha," she says, "that makes me feel very old. I don't really know how to answer that one. I don't know, this is just me. I still think I'm 16, even though maybe I sound older. It's flattering but ... I'm blushing."

If she read this, she would no doubt be blushing again. But she won't be.

She doesn't bother reading anything written about her because "Who cares what other people think, whether it's flattering or bad?"

Minding about what other people think is not in her game plan. Nothing that could get in her way is. This is the bit - the confidence, the ambition, the drive - that causes people to comment on the mature-beyond-her-years public persona.

Still, when she blushes and just for a moment loses that perfect composure, you can see that she is just a 16-year-old who happens to have an amazing talent for hitting a tennis ball.

The day we went to see Erakovic she was nursing a very bad cold with bad grace. This might entitle most 16-year-olds to lie about and whinge a bit and demand pampering.

Not Erakovic, who is itching to get back on a court and hit a ball. I had thought she might be quite glad of a little lie-down after a very big week, but suggest it and she looks at you as though you are from another planet.

Which you are. Or she is. She is missing training: "I know every training session counts and if I miss one I think, 'Damn, I could have had that. I could have done more to improve my game'."

Her mother, Ljiljana, says: "Tell about the time you were injured."

"Oh, what did I do?" Erakovic says. "Oh, I was injured, I had a stress fracture in my right arm and I couldn't really play tennis for about six months so ... we just did backhand, backhand, backhand for maybe a month. But they made us stop doing backhand so then ... I played left-handed."

And I suppose if she somehow managed to injure both arms she'd play with her feet? "Yeah," she says, of course she would. This is a stupid question. As are all questions about the confidence, the ambition, the drive.

For someone so young she is remarkably adept at masking any impatience with the daft things adults ask. But when you ask her if she does get annoyed she yelps "yes!"

Then, kindly, "but I understand people want to know and I'm fine with answering, so you can just keep asking".

But the point she is always trying to make is that, however peculiar her life looks from the outside, it is just her life. "It's normal for me."

Normal for Erakovic, on a school day, is training from 6am until 8am, then school, after school there is training from 4pm until 6pm, then either the gym or running, home around 8pm for dinner, then bed around quarter to nine. And the reason this is normal is because she has wanted since she was six years old to be the Number One female tennis player in the world.

On Wednesday she won her first professional game at the ASB Classic international women's tournament in Auckland. On Thursday she was defeated by Slovakian player Janette Husarova. Erakovic was sick both days. She's angry about being "crook" but was determined to play.

"This will happen many times again so it's good to see what it's like playing through it."

All experiences count towards that one big goal. "I learned a lot of lessons. That if you're sick or a bit down, you're still capable of playing good tennis. As well, I learned that I am definitely able to compete with these players, you know. I think I'm definitely able to handle it out there on the court."

And off. She'd already paid her media dues. She'd done her press conferences and was now out of the tournament, achy and at home in bed. But she gets up, puts on her sponsor's T-shirt to have her picture taken, and sits here patiently and politely in the living room at home for an hour answering silly questions. Any decision she makes is hers, but you could tell her mum thought she might as well do an interview.

When we arrived I said it was very nice of Marina to see us when she was feeling so rotten and Ljiljana said "Oh, she's bored anyway".

I think she was even more bored by the time I left but she is a very well brought up girl. The only time she made it clear she thought I was a twit was when I asked her whether she had any tennis-playing girlfriends. She explained that, "You can't really make friends. There's a lot of tension there. Well, I think there has to be. You can't really be be best buddies then go on court and still be best buddies."

Actually, only one of her friends - a runner - is at all sporty. She doesn't know why this might be. I tell her I think it would be difficult for her to have girlfriends or a boyfriend who played tennis because she would be too competitive and she laughs and says "true".

There is a tennis "type" she says. "I would have to say that there is. I think tennis players are definitely full of confidence and they only think about themselves and nobody else." Her mother hastens to add that this "doesn't mean that she doesn't care for others".

"But," says Erakovic, "if that's how you have to be ... if you're not, you just get crushed." Some people, she says, "are meant to play individual sports and some people are meant to play team sports.

"When I'm playing a team sport I'm all over the place. If I'm playing volleyball, I just go for the ball."

She does not play well with others "No, I guess that's why I play tennis." A tennis player learns to rely on themselves, she says, "because you're the only one out there".

She, and Ljiljana, think she gets a good amount of her resilience and competitiveness from her Croatian roots - the family came from Split to New Zealand 10 years ago. Croatians, Ljiljana says, "have a very hard-working mentality and the competitiveness as well. They had to fight for every single litre of wine, or for food, so it's probably in our genes".

Unlike New Zealanders who "don't rock the boat" and are ... "soft", blurts Erakovic.

I had asked her, in my New Zealand way, what about being, say, Number 2, or even Number 3 and she said, "Umm, I honestly don't want to think about that but if it does happen," she shrugs, "what can you do?"

Not that she minds this, you understand, it's just not her way.

Her way involves years more travelling, more hard work, more early morning training. More of her parents only seeing each other about 20 days in a year because her father is a sea captain who fits working around travelling with Erakovic.

It does not involve feeling the weight of expectations because she happens to be New Zealand's brightest tennis hope in a very long time.

There are our hopes, and there are her hopes and "Yeah, I guess it kind of builds up, but I try not to think about it because I kind of am the only one. You know, my expectations, I cope with that."

This is a terribly grown-up attitude. But there is one last glimmer of a typical teenager in fan mode. Well, almost. She is more likely to have posters of players rather than pop stars on her bedroom wall. Ask her who is the greatest woman tennis player ever and she offers the mature answer first: "Navratilova. She won more titles." And then, "but I like Monica Seles better. She's been my favourite tennis player forever."