"She likes to hit the ball hard into the corner. Very, very hard."--Fellow tennis player Gabriella Sabitini.

Lindsay Davenport had always been a victim of high expectations. Tennis experts saw that she had the skill to be the number one player in the world. However, she could never reach the pinnacle of her sport, despite the fact that she won the gold medal in women's singles at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. That all changed in 1998, as Davenport broke through to win the U.S. Open women's singles championship and captured the top ranking in the world.

Growing Up

Nothing But Nets

Lindsay Davenport was born June 8, 1976, in Palos Verdes, California. Her family loved a game that uses a net, but it was not tennis. Davenport's father, Wink, a vice president at an engineering company, was a member of the 1968 U.S. Olympic men's volleyball team...