Wimbledon Is Learning Experience For Capra

Ellicott City Teen Moves Up To 19th Among Junior Girls

Before losing in the third round of Wimbledon to Miyabi Inoue of Japan, Capra, ranked 19th in the world in juniors, withstood a taut second-round match with Tamara Curovic of Serbia. She won the first set 6-3 and started thinking about winning the match - "It just struck me, 'Oh, my God, I could win this,' " she said - which led to a tightening, which led to a third set in which Capra went through a litany of match points before prevailing.

"I think it was good for me because I fought all the way. I was really proud of myself," she said.

And then, off the court, she found herselfwalking past women's semifinalists Elena Dementieva and Dinara Safina but feeling too scared to approach them "because I'm afraid I'll make them lose focus."

On the TV monitors in those rooms, she and the fellow players she calls friends got a sense of the possible when they watched Melanie Oudin, the Atlantan who reached the final 16 of the women's draw.

"Last year Melanie and I were playing the same tournaments, and this year she's beating [No. 6 Jelena] Jankovic," Capra said. "So it was really inspiring, what she did."

That goes also for the entire five-week Italian Open-French Open-Wimbledon trek for a player with Italian lineage, extended family around Milan and the capacity to understand Italian if not speak it.

"It's amazing," she said. "It's unbelievable to me."

Baltimore Sun reporter Aaron Wright contributed to this article.