KEY POINTS:
There's been a tennis racket in Shenay Perry's hand pretty much every day since she was four years old. She's now 22, so you would think that after 18 years of constantly playing and training, there would be the odd day in her life in which she felt like she was over tennis.
She says absolutely not. "It's something that I love and it's something that drives me."
She may be driving closer to becoming the next big star of US tennis - or at least a player who can fill the gap left by the fact that, for the first time in 30 years, 2006 saw no American woman among the world's top 10. Lindsay Davenport is the highest ranked at 25 and, along with Serena and Venus Williams and Jennifer Capriati, all are either injured, inactive or close to retirement. Perry is the third-highest ranked American and has steadily climbed to 44th in the world - with a highest placing so far of 40th - but comes with some heavyweight opinion backing her potential.
Federation Cup captain Zina Garrison told the Washington Post that Perry has potential to go far. "She is so gifted," said Garrison, who has tracked her progress for years. "Her hands are some of the most talented hands I've seen in a long time. She hasn't quite understood just how gifted she is, but she can pretty much get anything and everything back. She is one of those people who makes things happen."
Perry is in Auckland for what she reckons is her fifth visit. There's uncertainty only because she's spent so much time on tour that tournaments meld into one amorphous blob.
What she does know is that she loves the city and the tournament in which she will start as No 8 seed against Camille Pin of France. It's a game she's expected to win, but Perry says she doesn't come to tournaments with set goals.
She's a 'go-with-the-flow' sort of gal and really her objective this week is to try and scrape some of the inevitable rust off her game before the Australian Open. In fact, she says her only target is to get through the next 12 months without major injuries.
A bruised bone in her knee bothered her for much of last year and she opted to miss the Asian swing of the WTA Tour to allow her some space to recuperate and regain her fitness.
"I want to get through my first game and then get some more matches. But you have to keep winning to get more matches."
That break Perry took in September and October has left her in good mental and physical shape to ensure that she keeps pushing on in 2007 after an impressive 2006.
Dumped out in the first round of the ASB Classic last year and also in the first round of the Australian Open, Perry made an inauspicious start to 2006. Her form picked up in May and she reached the third round of the French Open. She went one better the following month when she made the fourth round at Wimbledon - the last American left standing in that tournament - and by July she had broken into the world's top 50.
Having experienced the thrill of centre court action at the business end of Wimbledon, there is a confidence within Perry now that she can handle the biggest occasion.
Even though she has played the game since she was four when her father, a keen player himself, took her to some public courts in Washington DC, there were still nerves to overcome at the Grand Slam events.
Willis Thomas, director of tennis at Washington's Tennis and Education Foundation, where Perry developed her game told the Post: "It was a heck of a learning experience. It doesn't happen often when you get up there in those positions at Grand Slams. The whole country rode on her shoulders and it was too much for her."
Bettering last year's achievements would certainly be a nice way to reward the faith and patience her family has invested. Perry's family left Washington when she was 12 so she could take up a scholarship at Nick Bolettieri's academy in Florida.
Perry had shown so much promise as a six-year-old that she had all the various academies offering her this that and the other. She headed to Florida to follow in the footsteps of her two tennis heroes. "I always liked Andre Agassi but I felt my game was based more on Pete Sampras."
Having followed in the footsteps of Sampras once, she would dearly love to do it again.
