When former Wimbledon doubles champion Corina Morariu was diagnosed with leukemia 14 months ago, the last thing on her mind was ever playing tennis again. “It was more of a case on focusing on staying alive,” Morariu says. “It wasn’t even a fear of not playing again, but a fear of not being around.”Morariu, now in remission from her cancer, laughed softly at her remark over the phone line yesterday during a conference call from Dallas, Texas, where she is working with a new coach, preparing for a comeback.Her first stop is next Monday in Philadelphia, where she will play with her world team tennis team against the New York Hamptons. She’ll then play a few WTA tournaments, including doubles at the Acura Classic in San Diego at the end of the month, with her goal the US Open beginning August 26. In late November, when she came out of a three-month hospital stay after four courses of chemotherapy, none of that seemed possible.“I couldn’t walk 20 yards,” Morariu, 24, said. “But I started back slowly by walking, then adding a little bit of jogging. I gradually tried to get my body back into shape.“The same thing with hitting — 15 minutes every other day, then 30 minutes, and I worked it up from there. Since mid-April, I’ve been trying to hit a few times a day, trying to get back into good enough shape to play matches again.”Before her illness, Morariu’s highest singles ranking was 29 and she was ranked No. 1 in doubles for part of 2000. In 1999, she won the Wimbledon doubles title with Lindsay Davenport and in 2001 the Australian Open mixed doubles title with Ellis Ferreira. Four months after her Australian Open win — in May 2001 — she began feeling extremely sick. For several months earlier she had suffered from frequent nosebleeds and unusual bruising. “In hindsight, I had had some benign symptoms for months,” Morariu said. “But in a couple of days, my health deteriorated very dramatically.”“I had been told a few days earlier what it might be, so I had some time to prepare. But obviously it came as a huge shock.”
