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 I suppose this post should be about the Serena Williams-Justine Henin match, but a funny thing happened to me on the way to Armageddon, Part 3 (which was, from what I could tell, played under the influence of Prozac, or as Henin would more charitably describe it, "serenity"). I fell in love with Serbia. So my ongoing "to-do" list has now been modified:
1 - Run around Paris, trying to find a Serbian national soccer team jersey with a name on the back - and something without vowels, please; it's got to be as consonant-heavy as the name of Superman's Nemesis (Mr. Mxplyx. . . oh hail, I don't remember, help!).
2 - Call the Super Bowl network and tell the meatheads in the suits that when the next MVP walks off the field and a microphone gets shoved in his face, he should say, "I'm going to Zrenjanin!"
3 - Text message whichever Ramone is still alive and have him change the name of the song to "I Wanna Be Serbiated."
Yeah, I've got it that bad. But we had an extraordinary moment in tennis here today, and it had nothing to do with the Henin family reunion or a Richard Williams rant; at 1:37, Jelena Jankovic punched her ticket to the semifinals with a win over Nicole Vaidisova, and exactly one minute later, Ana Ivanovic closed out Svetlana Kuznetsova to advance to the semis on the other side of the draw. Is it possible that in two days time, we'll be talking about Roland Garros, aka The Serbian Open?
There was a fitting symmetry to putting JankIvanovic on different courts with the same start time (Ivanovic on Chartrier, Jankovic on Lenglen), although that presented me with certain problems. My tactical decision was to sit at my press desk with the headphones, a TV sets on either side tuned to one of the matches. An added benefit here was that I got reverse-Esperanto commentary: a Babel of in English, Spanish, French, Serbian, Russian and some other languages that I can't speak and therefore in which I can't say anything stupid.
The match on Lenglen was a battle between the all-star infielder (Jankovic) and the home-run hitter (Vaidisova), and the perky retriever executed her game plan to perfection. She ran down Vaidisova's aggressive, forcing shots and continually made her hit one more ball, giving her the opportunity to hit one more error, until the last one ended it in Jankovic's favor, 6-3,7-5. Afterward, Jankovic would say: "I was moving really well today, and I tried to defend her balls. And that's mainly what the key of the match was. I was just retrieving well, and now I'm happy to be in the semifinal for the first time here in Paris."
Charlie Bricker, my spy on Lenglen, slipped down to the player's exit from the court immediately after the match and reports that as soon as Jelena walked into the corridor, she fell into the arms of her mother, Snezana (putting that one on your short list for baby names?). Jelena said, "Oh mother, my heart was beating so fast at the end that I was afraid . . " And here she used her hand to simulate the beating against her breast. "But it was inside and it couldn't get out!" Snezana, in case you don't know, is one of the 11 million "economists" churned out in a part of the world that, at the time, had no economy.
The match on the Centrale might have been the Hundred-Acre Wood Open, as it featured Pooh Bear (Ivanovic) vs. Eyeore (Kuznetsova) in an uneven, flawed clash. Ivanovic won 6-0,3-6,6-1.She played flawless, aggressive, tennis in the first set, hiccuped in the second, but pulled her game back in a tight pony tail again in the third.
Oh, Kuznetsova pulled a stomach muscle somewhere along the way, but who cares? Apparently Ivanovic woke up this morning to discover that she is not really Ana Ivanovic but. . Jennifer Capriati! I'm not kidding about that. The big difference I see between the two is that Ivanovic appears to be as sunny as Capriati was surly.
In a way, you had to feel bad for Eyeore. For one thing, that plum-trying-to-be-pink dress Kuznetsova wore had people wondering, "what color would you call that?" It had other interesting features as well, like the effective way it showed and emphasized perspiration. But Kuznetsova's inadequacies as a fashionista are only slightly more glaring than her profile as a dissident champion.
When Kuznetsova won the US Open in 2004, she found herself staring at a big window to establish her self as a top player, what with Maria Sharapova still green, Henin virally afflicted, Kim Clijsters willing to step down - instead of up - on nearly every big occasion, and Venus and Serena holding aloft the skull of Yoric, deep in a conversation that would last some years. Now, it appears that the window may be closed. The aforementioned women are all (with the possible exception of Venus) on an even keel, and a handful of new contenders, including the Vitches, are on the radar. Nobody can say Sveta didn't have the kind of shot Jim Courier made the most of, under similar circumstances, a decade or so ago. She shut the window instead of jumping through it.
The presser conducted by each of the Vitches was a love-in, and if it didn't exactly start that way, I was hellbent on turning it into one. Jankovic appeared with her hair pulled back, lip gloss flickering in the intense indoor lights. She was beaming. I observed that with the Vitches winning simultaneously and Novak Djokivic also doing well, there seemed to be some kind of Serbian magic at work. Jelena giggled her way through the reply: A Serbian power or something, that wherever you go you see just Serbians (laughing). Wherever you go, it's just Serbians all over the place, winning all these matches. It's just incredible. I'm just proud of that, and just, hopefully, we can keep going.
"Do you see any of that in the street? Do Serbian people see you and recognize you in the streets in Paris? In Paris, I haven't had the chance to walk around on the street so people can recognize me. I'm always mainly locked up, trying to concentrate and do my own things.
Bricker had the nerve to turn the conversation back to tennis, asking Jankovic if she needed to get her serve a little quicker and a little more accurate for the final stages of the tournament. Her reply was vintage Jankovic: Me and my serve, it's just unbelievable. I have to really work on my serve. But at the moment, who knows? I am now four or three in the world with this serve. Can you imagine if I had a bigger serve, so what I would do to these girls, but...(laughing). No, I am just kidding. I am just trying to work on this serve. But everybody has their weaknesses, their weapons in their games. So nothing -- you cannot have all weapons. You cannot have all so good shots. But I am trying to improve this, and some things cannot happen overnight.
I ripped the mike out of deadbeat Charlie's hand and got back to the topic at hand: "You have a great fighting spirit on the court, and in here you have a great spirit. . . a humorous spirit. Isn't there a contradiction in there somewhere?" I really don't know. I'm a girl, I like to win, for sure. I always give my best, and I fight until the end. I never want to let the opponent get on top of me. I'm just there to fight and really give my all on the court. Off the court, I am an outgoing, fun person, and that's my personality, for sure.
Someone observed that the Player Lounge has been packed with Serbs these past few days, and Jelena revealed that some of the most well-known Serbs are gathered in Paris, relishing some kid of Serbian breakout. These personages include the winner of a recent Eurovision singing contest (think, Serbian Idol, sans Paula Abdul), a few of the obligatory soccer stars, whatever. It's all good; who said this is Justine's House?
Somebody else wondered if Jelena had bumped into Ana in the locker room, enabling them to exchange congratulations. Her reply was animated: No, she (Ana) was in Chatrier and I was in Lenglen, which is a long way. And the woman from the media kept going after me, "Hurry up, hurry up, you have to be on time." You can see, I didn't brush my hair. She's like, "You need to be there 1:30." I'm like, "Okay, I will try my best."
And when Jelena was asked to reflect on her chances going forward, she said: Now I'm in the semifinal. I still have -- everybody in the beginning of the week when I play my first round, you're favorite to win the French Open, you are this, you are that. So many expectations. But I said to myself, when I would be holding the trophy, then I am the favorite. Then I won the tournament, and for sure, I did this.
It was an interview brimming with charm and bonhomie - such a marked difference from some of the tense and even unpleasant debriefings to which we've grown accustomed. Oh, sure, the Vitches haven't felt the pressure of success nor heat of close scrutiny, but I almost forgot how much fun it is to play with the kittens before they grow the claws of the Big Cats.
In her own presser, Ivanovic was equally willing to show - and share - the glee she felt, and she still was a little shell-shocked by what she had achieved. When I asked if a match that ragged was good preparation for a tough semi (she will play Sharapova, while Jankovic plays Henin), she was still a little dazed: Yeah, sure it was. It was a very tough match. Everything was happening quite fast. First set was, I would say, a little bit strange. I played some really good tennis. I was aggressive. And, I guess, she was a little bit nervous. . .Everything was happening very fast, so I didn't think much about it. I just tried to move forward and be aggressive, and stay low. And I didn't make -- I hadn't made any errors, so I would say I was pretty good.
Ivanovic conceded that the prospect of an all-Serbian final was "very exciting" and, rather amusingly, reminded us that we had never witnessed such thing before. That was my cue to ask if something "supernatural" was going on here for Serbia. She said: Yeah, it's very exciting to see all of us doing so well. Especially we are all very young, so we all have many years in front of us and many possibilities. So it's very exciting, and I'm sure people back home are very proud of us, and that makes us feel very good.
I asked if she talked to Novak Djokovic much, and she said:
Yeah, we speak and we catch up. It's nice to see, because I've known him for a very long time, so it's nice to catch up . . I can learn also from watching him play, because men's game is different than women's, so I can learn watching him. And he is a great player. He can achieve a lot.
Of course, Ana can't be expected to huddle with Jelena quite as freely as with the Djoker, and she confessed that what conversations she has with Jelena tread lightly around the subject of tennis. But she stressed that all the Serbs still feel they can learn from each other. And this led Bricker to cut to the chase and ask Ana about her relationship with Jelena. She described it like this: Well, when we start playing tennis, she was -- she's two years older than me, so we never played many tournaments together back home, and we lived in different parts of the city. So we never practiced with each other. And then she went to America and I went to Switzerland.
So we kind of we had different ways, different roads, so we never really had a chance to practice with each other. And even now, we both have our own teams and our own things we like to do. And it's a little bit different. But we are both a bit -- we both found our way, and we are both doing well, so that's the most important thing.
I observed, "Both you and Jelena both come in here and you kind of light up the room. You have great humor. You're happy and bubbly. Is this a national characteristic? Yeah, we are happy people. Yeah, people back home, they're very friendly and open. And, yeah, we like to have fun. And that's something, yeah, I guess we are just born like that and we bring that from home. So it's -- I think it's important to be positive and to have a smile.
Okay, this has been fun. But there's a serious dimension to all of this as well. This has been a historic Roland Garros, and Italian journalist and blogger extraordinare Ubaldo Scanagatta helped me put it into perspective in a conversation we had shortly after the Vitches made the semis. Ubaldo pointed out that when Lleyton Hewitt lost to Rafael Nadal yesterday, "it was the story of 75 years of tennis history, disappearing."
What he meant was that the three towering tennis powers - Great Britain (who invented the game), the Australians (who brought it to its apex at the dawn of the Open era) and the US (who dominated the game in the subsequent, commercially-driven era), were clearly - if not necessarily permanently - in ruins.Oh, there was Serena Williams on the women's side - for another 45 minutes, anyway - but Serbia and Russia accounted for half of the entire quarterfinal line-up at Roland Garros.
And about that fourth tennis power, France, home of the legendary Musketeers (LaCoste, Cochet, Borotra and Brugnon) had started 36 players in Paris this year - their bodies lay strewn all over the red clay, like so many poppies on a graveyard.
So much for the old world, let's celebrate the new. It's always better to live in the light than the dark.
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