Time Out

Angelique Widjaja was Indonesia’s next great tennis hope following a stellar junior career. After a difficult transition to the adult tour, she has opted to take a break from the game – with no date set for her return. She tells Bruce Emond why.

Angie Widjaja used to schedule her life religiously around the WTA Tour’s calendar of events. January meant sweltering Melbourne for the Australian Open; May was reserved for the European clay-court swing and Roland Garros; June was allocated for the short grass-court season and, of course, Wimbledon, the oldest, most prestigious of the sport’s Grand Slams.

This year, with the 22-year-old deciding in January to take an extended hiatus from the sport, there was no trip to London. But she also did not spare too much thought for the goings-on at SW19, the site of her 2001 triumph as Wimbledon junior girls champion.

“Even when I was playing, I didn’t care too much about other scores or tournaments if I wasn’t competing in them,” she said at a South Jakarta mall. “That is more my mother’s thing to check out the live scores.”

In a blouse and shorts, she is slimmer than during her days on the tour, even though she confesses she has not practiced at all during the last few months. She has only picked up her racket twice; once at an exhibition against national player Septi Mende in Surakarta and for a hit-and-giggle session withWynne Prakusya, another former national number one.

She also seems more confident and grown up. During tournament days, like so many young players, Angie was “sheltered” by her family, WTA Tour minders and manager. They were the shield from intrusive fans and media, allowing her to concentrate on her game. Her family even hid newspaper articles critical of her so that she did not read them.

Now, she is content to speak for herself. She does not wait for her manager to arrive but comes over to me to begin the interview. Her answers are frank and seemingly uncalculating, not the usual carefully worded responses of players in dealing with the media.

There has been much speculation about her reasons for leaving the Tour, including rumored family financial problems. She terms it “gossip”; the reason, pure and simple, she says, was that she was burned out from the grind of playing competitive tennis, and particularly the loneliness of constant travel.

“It wasn’t an easy decision. I didn’t know whether to just stop for a short while or take a real break. But I decided it would be best to stop for now,” said Angie.

She had only returned to tournament play in January 2006 after a 15-month recuperation from left knee surgery; her ranking had plummeted from highs of 55 for singles and 15 for doubles. That meant relegation to the thankless world of qualifying and satellite tournaments.     

“My ranking was already back in the 200s, but I just was so burned out. On court, I really wasn’t interested anymore.”

With her family and coach unable to accompany her to overseas events, and she came to dread leaving for She admits she was depressed; she can talk openly about it now, she adds, because she does not have to worry about offending the ever image-sensitive WTA Tour or national tennis bigwigs.

The decision to stop was hard because it affected a lot of people, from her management to local tennis fans hoping for a replacement for former world number 19 Yayuk Basuki. A special concern was the reaction of her close-knit family (she first picked up a racket at the age of four to keep up with her five older brothers).

“It was tough for them, especially for my father, because they want me to play ... I know that I’m young and I can earn money from this sport ... But I told them, ‘What can I do, I don’t have any motivation to play’.”

They have been supportive of her, she says, leaving it up to her to decide when – or if – she will return.

“People must think that I’m hungry to return to the court, but I haven’t got that feeling yet. That doesn’t mean it won’t come, but it hasn’t yet.”

Angie has been occupying her time with things she could never do on the tight practice-play-rest schedule of a professional tennis player: making friends with people her own age, learning about her father’s small hotel business, shopping. Basically, she is taking it easy.

Maybe things came too easily to her at the beginning of her career, she says. She won the Wimbledon juniors in 2001, beating current top 20 player Dinara Safina in the final (she won the junior title at Roland Garros the following year).    

There also was her remarkable, charmed run to win the end-of-year Bali tournament in 2001; she was making her debut on the tour as a wildcard ranked a lowly 579 (she remains the lowest-ranked player ever to win a tour event, and also one of the youngest)

Her ranking soared and her solid game – built around consistent groundstrokes, with adequate volleying skills and serve – helped her chalk up good wins over many of the sport’s journeywomen (she also famously dumped out a woefully error-prone Anna Kournikova in the first round of the 2002 US Open without ever hitting a clean winner). 

Despite her success, she found playing the tour was very different from the friendlier rivalries of the junior scene.

There was no more sitting down with other players for a post-match meal and chat; the women’s tour is an intensely competitive sphere where those outside the elite top 20 must fight for every point to earn their living. Players tend to stick with their coaches or their fellow countrywomen off court.

She calls the life “unnatural”, and, in a comment that would no doubt send the WTA Tour media officers into damage control mode, believes that there are increasing numbers of lesbian players simply because they have nobody else to turn to when loneliness sets in. 

Angie does not fault the tour, which has introduced counseling and seminars for young players after high-profile burnout cases, including Jennifer Capriati. She was not ready for the pressure and responsibilities that came with her early success.

“Maybe I was a bit spoiled,” Angie says. “I made it into the top 100 almost within a year, so I didn’t have to play Challengers [lower-tier tournaments]. Maybe my preparation wasn’t sufficient to deal with it. You see a lot of players who have early success, but then their form quickly goes down.” 

Interestingly, she found an ally in Ashley Harkleroad, the American player she beat in the final at Roland Garros. She also took a long hiatus from tennis when Angie was injured.

“We shared our experiences when we both came back, and she told me that she reached a point where she didn’t want to play anymore. I told her, ‘I thought I was the only one’.”

She has been asked to play in the Southeast Asian Games, but says she would prefer not to; she does not want to take the money and then not play her best.

Although Angie has received offers of scholarships from several U.S. universities, she does not enjoy studying – “I don’t like reading”. She says she would really love to learn more about culinary science.

In the meantime she is waiting for the day when that nagging desire to step back on court returns. For now, she is simply enjoying herself.

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