Story highlights
Capriati's ex-boyfriend said she punched him four times at a gym
He said the former tennis star also stalked, harassed or followed him several other times
Charges are dropped since she finished community service, anger management classes
Capriati's legal representative has said the allegations are overexaggerated
Former teen tennis phenom Jennifer Capriati is off the hook after accusations that she stalked and punched an ex-boyfriend last Valentine’s Day.
Battery and stalking charges will be dropped now that Capriati, 37, has completed 30 hours of community service and four hours of anger management counseling, the state attorney’s office in Palm Beach County, Florida, said.
The alleged quarrel took place on February 14 at a gym in North Palm Beach. According to a police report, the ex-boyfriend claimed Capriati started screaming at him before punching him with a closed fist four times in the chest.
The ex-boyfriend, Ivan Brannan Jr., said he was eventually able to lock himself in the men’s locker room, according to the police report. Four days later, he went to police headquarters and outlined what he said were “seven other incidents pertaining to Capriati stalking/harassing/following” him.
Brannan said he’d dated the American tennis player from May 2011 to February 2012.
Capriati’s camp has denounced the allegations.
“The current facts being circulated by Mr. Brannan are an overexaggeration and the police report is one-sided in (his) favor, since they failed to get Ms. Capriati’s side of the story,” read a statement attributed to the ex-tennis player’s legal representative last year.
Capriati burst on the tennis scene as a teenager, breaking into the sport’s ranking of top 10 players by 14 and advancing to the semifinals of the French Open in 1990.
She remained a force on the tour into the early 1990s, highlighted by a gold medal win at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.
But Capriati’s star status faded the next few years, a time that included widely reported arrests on shoplifting and marijuana possession charges. She remained off the court into the late 1990s.
The New York-born tennis player came back strong at the end of the decade, and in 2001 won the Australian Open and the French Open on her way to becoming the world’s No. 1 player that year. Another Australian Open title came the following year.
The 2004 season was Capriati’s last. Eight years later, she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
CNN’s Janet DiGiacomo and Greg Botelho contributed to this report.