 Twenty-four hours earlier, Arthur Ashe Stadium had been the stage for a scandalous and disgraceful scene, with Serena Williams, the defending U.S. Open champion, departing the court in defeat and ignominy. Sunday evening, the negative reverberations of that ugly incident were replaced by genuine warmth, broad smiles and happy tears. Belgium’s Kim Clijsters had just defeated Caroline Wozniacki in the U.S. Open final, but there were no contentious feelings in the aftermath of their one-hour, 34-minute match. Instead, the finalists took turns complimenting each other’s games and personalities—“she’s such a good girl,” the affable Wozniacki said of the universally liked Clijsters during on-court post-match interviews. Then just when you thought things couldn’t get any fuzzier, Clijsters’ impossibly adorable 18-month-old daughter started toddling around the baseline, her strawberry blond curls reflected in the silver trophy her mother had just won.
The Clijsters story is a remarkable one. She won her first major title at the 2005 U.S. Open, but after struggling with injury and burnout, retired in the spring of 2007. The next two years were eventful: she married the American Brian Lynch, a former Villanova hoopster; gave birth to daughter Jada; and lost her father to lung cancer. It was only last month that Clijsters, 26, returned to competitive tennis; the U.S. Open was just her third tournament back. Unranked, she needed a wild card from tournament organizers to enter the Open, her first since she won here four years ago. Now Clijsters is the first wild card in the history of women’s tennis to win a Grand Slam title, and the first mother to claim a major since Evonne Goolagong won Wimbledon in 1980.
Over the past two weeks, Clijsters has shown all her old familiar power and athleticism, plus a new poise and perspective that come partially, she says, from being a parent. Though she admits she still gets extremely nervous in big moments, she’s now less susceptible to collapsing. In her remarkable run through the draw here, Clijsters beat Venus Williams in the fourth round and Serena Williams in the semis. But the Belgian never got to celebrate the achievement of besting Serena, the best player on the planet, on Saturday. The circumstances under which their semifinal ended denied Clijsters her triumphant moment.
Over the past decade, I’ve covered five Olympics and dozens of international sporting events, but I’ve never before witnessed anything like the ugly scene that transpired on Arthur Ashe Saturday evening. At a critical juncture in what had been a highly compelling and high-quality women’s semifinal, an unfortunate call precipitated the most notorious incident in the stadium’s history. Serena Williams, the defending champion, was serving to stay in the match when she was called for a foot fault on a second serve, thus giving her opponent, Clijsters, a match point. A furious Williams unleashed a vicious tirade on the lineswoman who had made the foot fault call and was subsequently assessed a point penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. Because the penalty came on match point, the match was over, and Serena was out of the tournament.
Serena may have been justified in going berserk, but it was the nature of her outburst that was troubling. In a statement Sunday, Stacey Allaster, the chairman and CEO of the WTA Tour, called Serena’s behavior “inappropriate and unprofessional”—inadequate condemnation of behavior that was, in reality, frightening and appalling.
Yes, the foot fault call was bogus and ill-timed. Whether or not Serena’s foot actually skimmed the line—replays were inconclusive—you can’t call a foot fault on a second serve at 15-30, 5-6 in the second set of a Grand Slam semifinal. Unless it’s a blatant violation (and in this case, it wasn’t), you just can’t make that call. Going ballistic was the appropriate reaction. If I had been in her situation, I’d have had an absolute meltdown—screaming, crying, cursing, smashing racquets, and generally throwing a you-have-to-be-kidding-me tantrum on the court.
But there was something different and, honestly, a little scary, about Serena’s response. It wasn’t just that she was livid; it was as if she had lost her mind. More disturbing than the profanity-laden vitriol she directed at the lineswoman was the menacing body language that accompanied it. I was seated in the media section, about 30 rows back directly behind the lineswoman, so I witnessed Serena’s tirade from the same head-on vantage point as the judge herself. Serena’s outburst was intimidating: her eyes bulged as she brandished her racquet pointedly and menacingly. I couldn’t hear the words that poured out of her mouth (“I swear to God, I’ll [expletive] take this ball and shove it down your [expletive] throat,” was the most malicious line in the profane tirade, I learned afterwards) but I could see the fury in Serena’s face and the hostility in her aggressive posture. It was a shocking and dreadful scene.
The ending of that semifinal is a blight on the image of Williams, an 11-time major champion, as well as the game itself. But another unfortunate result of the match’s contentious ending was that it denied Clijsters the moment of triumph she deserved. She cried tears of joy and disbelief after having ousted Venus in the fourth round; imagine what her match point celebration could have been against Serena.
Fortunately, Clijsters got to celebrate an even sweeter victory the next night in the final. The last point of Clijsters’ match against Wozniacki was decided by play, not by penalty. The Belgian finished championship point with an emphatic overhead, and then fell to her knees, her face in her hands, overwhelmed by what she’d accomplished. A month after returning to tennis, she was the U.S. Open champion. As the crowd celebrated her achievement, a weeping Clijsters climbed up to the stands to hug her husband. Where a day earlier we’d seen venom and vitriol, we were now witnessing a joyous family reunion.
 She’s not returning from debilitating injury like Taylor Dent, who spent nine months in a full-body cast after spinal fusion surgery and worried he might never again move without pain, let alone return to professional tennis. Nor is she a hero of the geriatric set like Jimmy Connors, who turned 39 during his rousing run to the U.S. Open semifinals in 1991. But Kim Clijsters’ comeback story is compelling in its own right, and on Sunday the Belgian’s stirring fourth-round victory over Venus Williams was celebrated by an appreciative Arthur Ashe crowd.
“I don’t know if it’s because I’m married to an American now, but it’s very special,” Clijsters said afterwards of the support she has received this week in New York. “I’ve been away from home for a few months now already, [so it is] just nice when you come out on court and you have the people yelling for you.”
Now 26, Clijsters is in the quarterfinals of her first U.S. Open since 2005, when she won her first—and to date, only—Grand Slam singles title. A wrist injury prevented her from defending her title in 2006, but she says it was shifting priorities as much as physical ailments that led to her abrupt retirement in May 2007.
“I was kind of just a little bit tired of it,” she said Sunday of her decision two-and-a-half years ago to quit tennis. “I had other things in my mind that I wanted to achieve as a woman and as a person, [and] that made me not be so disciplined anymore in my tennis career.”
Clijsters married New Jersey native (and former Villanova basketball player) Brian Lynch two months after announcing her retirement; the couple welcomed a daughter, Jada, in February 2008. Nearly a year later, in January 2009, Clijsters’ father, Lei, a former pro soccer player, died of lung cancer at age 52. It wasn’t until a few months later, when she started preparing for an exhibition match at Wimbledon, that Clijsters began contemplating a return to the Tour. She asked Lindsay Davenport, the three-time major champion who herself had enjoyed a brief but successful return to tennis after giving birth to her first child, what mixing motherhood and a pro sports career might entail.
“Without her telling me, ‘I’m definitely coming back,’ you could tell by her mindset that she knew she was going to play,” Davenport said last spring when I asked her about the discussions she’d had with Clijsters. “Her concern was being able to have enough time with her daughter. She doesn’t want to do this job without her husband and her daughter being able to travel with her all the time.”
With Lynch and their now 18-month-old daughter in tow, Clijsters returned to the ranks last month and posted solid showings at her two pre-Open tournaments, Cincinnati and Toronto. Still without a ranking, she got a wild card into the 128-woman draw here, and now, in just her third event back, finds herself among the last eight women standing at the U.S. Open.
Her 6-0, 0-6, 6-4 win over Venus wasn’t a masterpiece—“we never were really playing our best tennis at the same time until the third set”—but Clijsters’ trademark quickness, athleticism, lethal forehand and dogged defense were in full effect Sunday. Also in evidence: the familiar propensity to rush—and make errors—when the pressure is highest. Before her retirement, Clijsters was notorious for crumbling in big moments or failing to close out close matches. She lost four Grand Slam finals before finally winning the Open in 2005; that victory came more than two years after she first achieved the world No. 1 ranking (a fact that the hapless and Slam-less Dinara Safina might find encouraging).
Whatever new perspective parenthood might have brought her off the court, it didn’t prevent her from visibly tightening up against Venus in the third set today. Serving for the match at 5-4, she made two unforced errors to go down 0-30 quickly; it’s like she’s never been away, I thought to myself, bracing for a classic Clijsters implosion. But facing double break point at 15-40, she reeled off four straight points, including a final emphatic service winner, to put Venus away.
“I felt really nervous out there today,” she said afterwards. “It was kind of the first time I was in a big stadium like that, in a situation like that again, so I think it's pretty normal that you just go through those emotions all over. But I handled it well. I was glad to not let it go to 5 all and start all over in that third set.”
She may still be susceptible to getting tight in big moments, but Clijsters’ ability to summon her nerve today against Venus, a seven-time major champion, bodes well for her competitive comeback. But regardless of her result here, Clijsters knows she left the game—and then returned—on her own terms.
It wasn’t age or injury or adversity that forced her out of tennis in 2007, but a desire to have a family. Today, while her daughter toddled around the childcare center beneath Arthur Ashe stadium, Clijsters went out on that court and beat the No. 3 player in the world. It’s not a common comeback story, but it’s a good one.
 I’ve been attending the U.S. Open regularly since 1994, the year I arrived in New York City to start college. No longer living under my mother’s roof, and making my own decisions for the first time in my life, I thought it would be prudent to skip some freshman orientation activities (and, I admit, a couple of classes) in favor of a trek or two out to Flushing on the 7 train. I’d have four years to get acquainted with my classmates, I reasoned, but only two weeks to catch live Grand Slam tennis.
Within minutes of stepping onto the grounds the first day, I was enamored; I’d never experienced anything like the U.S. Open before. A few weeks earlier I’d been in the thriving cosmopolitan metropolis that is Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to watch the Red Sox’ Triple A team; now I was taking in a global sporting event, colored with a healthy dose of New York ’tude and staged in the sophisticated city that was my new home. I was hooked.
In the ensuing 15 years, I’ve made it to the Open more than I’ve missed it, though this is my first time covering the event as a member of the written (or electronic) press. (I worked on the television side, for USA Network, the last couple of years.) On Monday, I marked the occasion of another Open’s Opening Day with a Fulton’s Seafood cold Maine lobster roll, which was only slightly more expensive than that first year of university tuition. Since Monday, my TENNIS.com editing duties have preempted me from serving as daily scribe, as I did at the first two majors of the year. But I will occasionally be contributing posts from this tournament. For now, a few notes:
Going Streaking
The tournament most closely associated with Roger Federer’s career is Wimbledon. The All-England Club was, after all, the site of his first major victory, in 2003, and his record-breaking 15th major, in July, as well as his loss to Rafael Nadal in the 2008 final—arguably the greatest match ever played. But Flushing Meadows has been the stage for some of Federer’s most brilliant performances (his genius was on particular display when he beat Lleyton Hewitt, 6-0, 7-6 (3), 6-0, in the 2004 final), and he has the chance to make more history here next weekend. Federer could become the first man in Open Era history to win the same Grand Slam event six consecutive times.
As it stands now, Federer’s U.S. Open winning streak his astounding. Including his second-round victory here on Wednesday night, he’s won 37 consecutive matches, a run that dates back to his fourth-round loss to David Nalbandian in 2003. The last time Federer was beaten at the U.S. Open, Barack Obama was an Illinois state legislator contemplating a run…for U.S. Senate.
A sixth straight title would break the record that Bjorn Borg set in winning Wimbledon from 1976-80, and which Federer matched at Wimbledon from 2003-07. With a win, he would tie nine-time Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova, who won six straight Venus Rosewater dishes from 1982-87. It seems that every time Federer plays a major, there is a record at stake, but what he’s already accomplished this summer at the French and Wimbledon shouldn’t dilute the significance of a sixth consecutive U.S. Open title, should he achieve it.
Tempering Expectations
This afternoon I headed to Grandstand to catch the third set of the third-round match between the eighth-seeded Victoria Azarenka of Belarus (and lately, of Arizona) and Francesca Schiavone, the No. 26 seed from Italy. Azarenka has had a breakthrough season, highlighted by a straight-sets defeat of Serena Williams in the Miami final in March, and the 20-year-old was a popular pick to make it deep into the second week here.
But much to the chagrin of Azarenka, Schiavone played at a high level today, pulling out a 4-6, 6-2, 6-2 victory with attacking tennis and perhaps a bit of gamesmanship—she took an injury timeout when she was up a break in the final set. “She is, I think, one of the best players in the world, so for me it’s great that I beat her and how I beat her,” Schiavone effused afterwards. “I was trying to hit long and sometimes to open the angle and be aggressive.”
Azarenka, who sported bright yellow fingernail polish to match her fluorescent top and headband, was clearly distraught afterwards. She had made the quarterfinals of Roland Garros and Wimbledon earlier this season; this was not a player who expected to be bowing out in the third round. After double-faulting on match point—her sixth double on the day—Azarenka smashed her racquet in a fiery display of frustration. She then trudged to the net to administer the customary post-match kiss-on-each-cheek to her vanquisher. Never before had I seen a person meekly offer this graceful social gesture a mere 15 seconds after throwing a temper tantrum.
Azarenka has the powerful game and the physique to merit her Next Big Thing label, but one has to wonder, as my colleague Steve Tignor posited today, whether the intensity she displays during matches may ultimately prove to be a liability. There’s such a thing as wanting something too badly.
Saturday in Paris brought brilliant sunshine, a cloudless sky and temperatures in the low 70s—the kind of dazzling day that makes it particularly difficult to depart this idyllic place. But alas, tomorrow I make my retreat back across the Atlantic and return to my (mostly) pastry-free existence; my exit from this tournament, like Elena Dementieva’s, feels premature to me. Happily for our loyal readership, I’m being spelled by longtime TENNIS senior editor Peter Bodo, an accomplished tennis writer and, I suspect, a proficient consumer of croissant and chouquette himself. Pete will be offering courtside observations, analysis and prognostications daily on TENNIS.com.
So tomorrow I go back to a life where French is rarely spoken (“LeBron” doesn’t count, does it?) and where tennis is mostly consumed on television from the couch. Before my departure, a few final notes:
Roddick’s dream draw
 With a 6-1, 6-4, 6-4 victory over Marc Gicquel today, the sixth-seeded Andy Roddick advanced to the fourth round for the first time in eight French Open appearances. It was an impressive performance from Roddick, who said afterwards that he feels he is starting to move better on clay: “I’m able to kind of slide into my forehand.” Roddick’s run this week is laudable, considering his dismal recent record at Roland Garros: Barack Obama was five months into his U.S. Senate term the last time Roddick won a match here, in May 2005.
But it’s worth noting that the trimmed-down Roddick has had a cakewalk to the tournament’s second week. Coming into this event, his first two opponents—French wildcard Romain Jouan and Ivo Minar of the Czech Republic—had won a combined two matches in ATP Tour main draws this year. His opponent today, the Tunisia-born Frenchman, is a Top 50 player, but hardly a threat to a fit and focused Roddick on any surface. Roddick belongs in the fourth round given the quality of the competition he’s faced so far.
It gets significantly harder on Monday, when Roddick takes on French favorite Gael Monfils, the No. 11 seed and a semifinalist here last year. Monfils’ knee injury has not hampered him thus far in the tournament, and Roddick conceded that clay is the last surface on which he’d want to face the Frenchman. Nonetheless, Roddick said he has a “puncher’s chance” to record another win here. “I can hold serve on any surface,” he said. “If I can get into the tight points I like my experience level, and I've dealt with these situations for a long time.”
Russians take different routes to Sweet 16
Dinara Safina has been playing at a level that befits her No. 1 ranking. The 2008 French Open and 2009 Australian Open finalist has charged through her first three matches, losing a total of only four games so far and looking like a world-beater. The average length of her first three matches is a tidy one hour and one minute.
Meanwhile, Safina’s compatriot, the unseeded Maria Sharapova, has impressed in a different way. Returning to Grand Slam play for the first time in nearly 11 months, Sharapova has fought her way to three gritty three-set victories. The average time on court for Sharapova and her surgically-repaired shoulder: two hours, 13 minutes, well more than twice Safina’s average. Winning two more matches on her weakest surface is a tall order for the three-time major champion, but Sharapova could meet the much-fresher Safina in the semifinals.
Setting it straight
With his third-round cruise-control victory over Lleyton Hewitt Friday, four-time defending champion Rafael Nadal improved his Roland Garros record to an unblemished (and unfathomable) 31-0; he owns the record for consecutive victories here. Even more staggering is his sets record: 92-7. (He has won 92 total sets in 31 matches, not 93, because Novak Djokovic retired from their 2006 quarterfinal when down two sets.) Nadal lost just three sets during his victorious debut run in 2005, three more in 2006, and one—in the final against Roger Federer—in 2007. He has since played 10 consecutive French Open matches without dropping a set.
Another Disappointment for Dementieva
It was apt that Australia’s Samantha Stosur was the one to upset No. 4 Elena Dementieva today given that another Aussie, Jelena Dokic, had Dementieva on the ropes in the second round. On Thursday, Dokic won the first set from Dementieva, 6-2, but injured her lower back during the second set and had to retire. (Dementieva said after that match that she didn’t think she would have won if Dokic hadn’t gotten hurt.) Today Dokic’s Fed Cup teammate, the 30th-seeded Stosur, defeated a listless looking Dementieva, 6-3, 4-6, 6-1, and advanced to the fourth round of the French for the first time.
After Nadia Petrova’s second-round loss here a few days ago, I wrote a piece about a trio of talented but underperforming Russian players—Dementieva, Petrova and Vera Zvonareva. (A few of the blog commenters pointed out that I had wrongly omitted Svetlana Kuznetsova, a player who won the 2004 U.S. Open but should have won more than just that one major.) Dementieva’s early exit—which she blamed, somewhat cryptically, on poor fitness—represents another missed opportunity in a career that has been long on excruciating near-misses and can’t-bear-to-watch collapses. Dementieva has made two major finals and five other major semifinals, but has yet to win a Grand Slam title. Asked where today’s loss ranks among her career disappointments at Roland Garros, the 2004 French Open finalist said simply, “I had so many.”
Flying flu-free
On the flight to Paris last week, my fellow passengers and I were asked to provide our contact information so the airline could inform us if anyone on the plane subsequently tested positive for swine flu. Mercifully, I haven’t heard a peep from Air France all week. Though la grippe porcine sounds better in French than its English-language equivalent, it is nevertheless an affliction I’d prefer to avoid.
A much more agreeable disorder is “Risotto-mania,” as one of the stations at Roland Garros’ outdoor dining area is called. I managed to keep my risotto-mania mostly in check this week, but I did succumb, blissfully, to the appeal of French cuisine—from pastries and breads and steaks and noix St. Jacques and fish and cheese and impossibly sweet fresh raspberries and strawberries—and of course superb French wine. After eight days of indulgence and excess and fabulous tennis, I head back to the States thinking there can’t be many better assignments than covering the French Open. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in the second week.
 Agnes Szavay, the Hungarian who took out third-seeded Venus Williams 6-0, 6-4 today, managed to keep her concentration through most of the one-sided one hour and 21-minute contest.
“Then I started to think, oh my God, I have match point against Venus,” a beaming Szavay recalled afterwards. “But suddenly the point was over, and I had won.”
The gregarious 20-year-old had played well on the clay earlier this month, defeating Victoria Azarenka to reach the quarterfinals in Madrid. Last week an illness forced Szavay to limit her practice time to 45 minutes per day, and she looked shaky in her opening-round win Monday. But by Wednesday, the power baseliner was back in full flight, overwhelming the Russian Elena Vesnina, 6-2, 6-0. Less than forty-eight hours after that, she had completed “maybe the biggest” win of her career in ousting the seven-time major champion.
Williams’ early exit isn’t particularly surprising; she has now lost in the third round at four of the last five French Opens. Lamenting that she couldn’t find the court in the first set, a subdued Venus was not altogether gracious in her post-match assessment of what had transpired on Court Suzanne Lenglen.
“She played really well, but I definitely have to attribute that loss to me not being able to execute what I wanted to on the court,” she said.
Szavay may have been lucky to catch Venus on an off day, but the No. 29 seed clearly has the game to hang with Top 10 players. She made an auspicious Grand Slam debut at the 2007 U.S. Open, upsetting No. 7 seed Nadia Petrova during her run to the quarterfinals. Last April her ranking reached a career-high No. 13, but she struggled on the summer and autumn hard-court circuit.
“I was really down mentally and just couldn't play my game,” she explained. “I was always so tight on the court and wanted to win so much. It was like too much expectations from the media and from other people. I think I couldn't handle it.”
After a disappointing first-round exit from this year’s Australian Open, Szavay split with her coach, Zoltan Kuharsky, and she has been on her own since then.
“I wanted to have few months alone, because all my life I had coaches with me for 24 hours [a day],” she said. Playing with more confidence and more joy this spring, she now finds herself in the Roland Garros round of 16.
On Sunday, she will face the 20th-seeded Slovak Dominika Cibulkova in a battle of Eastern European 20-year-olds. Szavay has beaten Cibulkova in all three of their meetings in the senior ranks, but the two have not played since 2007.
Szavay’s victory today means that one of the semifinalists here will have a seeding no higher than No. 20. The other two remaining players in that quarter of the draw: No. 25 seed Li Na and Maria Sharapova.
And if Szavay were to be that semifinalist, she could face friend and frequent hitting partner Dinara Safina, with whom she practiced yesterday.
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