Courting unwanted admirer

Courting unwanted admirer
Agence France Presse

Miami, April 3: Tennis star Martina Hingis told a court here how last year she was forced to interrupt tennis practice to warn off a man who had been harassing her with unwanted phone calls and attempts to visit.

The 20-year-old Swiss player said when she returned to her Zurich home after playing in a tennis tournament last June, a man who had made unwanted daily phone calls to her hotel, began to turn up on her doorstep three to four times a day.

After unsucessful attempts by her housekeeper to have the man leave, a family friend, Mario Widmer, went to speak to the man, to no avail, Hingis yesterday told the Miami-Dade circuit court.

On Widmer’s suggestion, Hingis herself then went out to speak to him.

“I had to stop practising, and Mario told me to come out and see him so I could tell him in person that I didn’t want to have anything to do with him, that he should get out of my life, stop ringing the bell, stop coming to my home and just leave me alone,” Hingis testified from the witness stand.

Australian Dubravko Rajcevic, 45, is accused of stalking the top-ranked tennis star and trespassing on her property.

During yesterday’s hearing, Hingis identified Rajcevic, seated across the courtroom, as the man she had attempted to warn off.

Rajcevic faces up to a year in prison if convicted by the jury, in a trial officials expect to last at least until tomorrow.

Rajcevic’s lawyer, Frank Adams, denies his client stalked Hingis, saying he had only sent love letters and flowers to the tennis star.

Hingis told the court that before appearing outside her home, Rajcevic phoned her daily at her Paris hotel, when she was playing in the 2000 French Open last June. She had asked the hotel desk to hold all her calls.

The unwelcome calls were initially handled by her mother, Melanie, Hingis said.“My mother is much more clear than I am ...She would tell him: ‘Stop calling.’ she would just hang up.”

The calls made her mother “mad, very angry,” Hingis added “I was also getting scared ... because when my mum gets mad she really lets everybody know she is not happy with the situation.”

The Slovakian-born Hingis moved to Switzerland when her mother married a Swiss national in a second marriage which also ended in separation.

Teamed with Helena Sukova in the ladies doubles, Hingis in 1996 became the youngest Wimbledon winner ever, at fifteen years old. She is currently ranked the world number one by the Women’s Tennis Association, despite losing in the semi-final of the tennis Masters series to Venus Williams last week.