Capriati Raps on

Cigarette in one hand, microphone in the other, Jennifer Capriati belted out Nelly's 'Hot in Herre' at a nightclub in New York City's East Village on a clammy evening last September. One of the lyrics, 'I am gettin' so hot, I wanna take my clothes off', was particularly appropriate with Capriati clad in sweat-flecked trousers and a black bra top.

This was not the 26-year-old American undergoing a relapse, returning to the days of her famous fall from grace in the mid- 1990s when, as she put it, she went down 'a path of quiet rebellion, of a little experimentation of a darker side of my confusion'. This was Capriati singing to forget a different kind of confusion a few hours after she had lost in the quarter-finals of the US Open, the year's last grand slam.

A day earlier, an injury-stressed Martina Hingis had been far too dejected to go clubbing after her attempt to win a second US Open title had also ended in failure, a heavy straight-sets loss at the hands of Monica Seles. For Hingis and Capriati, their US Open disappointments meant that 2002 was a year of under achievement after it had started so promisingly when they contested the final of the opening slam, the Australian Open. As the year unfolded, both were mere bystanders - and, to an extent, victims - as the sisters Serena and Venus Williams turned it into a remarkable 12 months of familial fulfilment.

By early June, the Williamses, as foretold by their father Richard, had powered their way to the top of the world rankings, which ensured that whenever they entered the same tournament the earliest they could meet was the final. And that was exactly what happened in the remaining slams, with Serena beating older sis Venus in the title match at the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. Now she is talking about completing the 'Serena slam' by winning the Australian Open to become the first player since Steffi Graf in 1994 to hold all four of the game's major titles at the same time.

To blame the Williams sisters for the injuries that ultimately wrecked Hingis's year - and possibly her career - may seem a little far-fetched, but the evidence points to Hingis having broken down as a result of taking physical risks to try to stay in touch with a game that was running away from her. Chasing down balls that the Williamses and a few others were dispatching with unprecedented ferocity, Hingis's body, never the most robust, was placed under intolerable strain.

In May, she underwent surgery for damaged ligaments in her left ankle and when she came back in August it was clear she had returned too soon, a fact she now acknowledges. She herself gave a brilliant insight into how things were going wrong: 'When I was right on top of my game, it used to be a case of, "OK, wait a minute, I need to think where I'm going to hit the next shot". Now I only get as far as "OK" and I have to hit as hard and as fast as I can.'

Younger players who faced Hingis when she started playing again remarked that they were surprised by how lightweight her game was compared to the new generation of players. Nadia Petrova, an emerging Russian, commented after beating Hingis in the Kremlin Cup in September: 'I think Martina is a very good player, but she played the same tennis as before she was injured. The game has changed now. It's more aggressive and she plays a soft tennis.' In October, Hingis withdrew again from tournament play and last month, after being unable to practise for more than three hours a day, she announced that she would not be returning for the Australian Open. Inevitably, rumours started to circulate that at 22 she was all washed up. As Capriati along to Nelly's lyrics she was trying to forget a year that, she felt, had gone inexplicably badly. She at least was supposed to have the power to go toe to toe with the Williams girls. Victory in the 2002 Australian Open meant she had walloped her way to three singles titles in five grand slams. She also had the sort of aggressive streak needed to avoid being intimidated by the sassy sisters. Occasionally it was too aggressive. In late April, she was thrown off the US team after she told the widely venerated Billie Jean King to eff off during a dispute over practice procedure for the Fed Cup. No one doubted she was pumped up for the summer slams in Paris and London.

It all proved of little account, though, after Serena came through strongly to beat Capriati 6-2 in the third set of their semi-final at the French Open. Whatever Capriati tried throughout the remainder of the year she was unable to re-establish the control that had seen her rise to number one in the world in October 2001 and stay there for the next four months. From where she was standing, Capriati could not understand why she was losing ground on the Williamses, even if the rest of us could see that it was not so much a case of her own form going into a slump as Serena's game, in particular, transcending anything seen before in the women's game. Serena's dazzling combination of power and control distracted Capriati, whose game started to misfire.

In her frustration, Capriati became increasingly irritable. During the 2002 US Open, it was all she needed to be reminded that Richard Williams had helpfully suggested she should stop swearing on court and listen more to her father. 'If Jennifer listened to him and stopped acting ignorant, she'd be all right,' said Williams. Capriati snapped back: 'You can see how ignorant that sounds and how disrespectful that sounds. I don't need his advice... You know, I could say things about them [the Williamses], but I'm not going to lower myself to that.'

Clearly Capriati needed that night out on the town, but that alone will not have prepared her for the year ahead. The next two weeks will tell us whether one of the few players with the fibre, muscular and mental, to take on the Williamses has regained the will and discipline to use it or whether, for the second time in her life, albeit it in a different context, the darker side of her confusion is going to prevail.