44 posts categorized "June 2011"
 LONDON—The prancing, pitter-patter steps. The back to the opponent, like a madman relief pitcher getting ready to storm the mound. The string-gazing and the hair flip and the world-famous Shriek. The spastic “Come on!” and the ever-present clenched fist. And now the latest addition, the hyped-up fiancée who sits at attention and fist-pumps in her direction even when she’s not looking at him. Yes, certain things about Maria Sharapova can seem designed to bug the old-fashioned tennis fan.
I’ve been thinking about that over the last six weeks, as I’ve heard and read the many jokes and complaints about Sharapova’s shrieking, in both Paris and London. You might think she would temper the noise, or, after of all these years on tour, ease up on the between-points rituals. Or at least unclench the fist. But Sharapova, like the Queen, or the All England Club, or an experimental jazz band, alters nothing to suit popular opinion. Sitting in Centre Court today and listening to the crowd titter away at her louder efforts, I wondered what, at this point, fans would do if she didn’t do the Shriek? Would they be just a little disappointed? It’s not a pretty noise, and there should probably be a rule against it, but for now it’s part of the performance.
It’s that ability to stay in her bubble, to ignore, that makes Sharapova a special competitor. She can ignore the laughs and jibes and keep right on grunting. She can ignore a long period of injury, frustration and lack of success at this, her favorite tournament—it might not feel like it, but it’s been seven years since she won the title here at 17. And, as she showed again today in the semifinals against Sabine Lisicki, Sharapova is very good at ignoring the score. In a matter of minutes, she was down 0-3. Lisicki was the rookie out there—this was the German’s first Slam semi—but it was Sharapova who was battling her nerves to start.
Which brings me to another question: We talk all the time about “winning the big points,” but this presupposes that we know when a big point is happening. Sometimes, though, we only recognize the most crucial moment in a match when it’s far back in the rearview mirror. Then we think—“Why didn’t I just win that one point? Everything would have been totally different.”
Today that point came with Sharapova serving at 0-3 and down break point. She double-faulted in that game and still seemed to be trying to find her legs, her movement, her range, her game. She needed to hold just to settle herself. Lisicki appeared to be picking up where she had left off in her previous matches, dominating rallies and serving big. With a break point for 4-0, Lisicki tried a drop shot and missed. It seemed like an innocent mistake at the time, but Sharapova went on to hold, and in the next game she turned into a completely different player. She won one point with a full-blooded crosscourt forehand, and two more with a play that worked well for her the rest of the way, a hard return of serve down the middle and near the baseline. It was a play that helped get that break of serve, and an even more crucial one to make it 5-4. No one knew it then, but the match was over.
Asked afterward how she turned it around, Sharapova started with a garden-variety comment. “I told myself to take it one point at a time and really focus.” But what seemed clichéd at first turned into a simple but important insight into how Sharapova operates. “I felt like I just kind of got into my zone,” she said. She found her space, the place where she could block everything out, including, and most important, her own bad play.
Living within her limits on court is something that Sharapova has learned to do since having shoulder surgery. Despite winning in seemingly routine fashion, the double fault haunted her, just as it had in her semifinal loss in Paris. She committed 13 today.
“Coming from the indoor match a couple days ago,” she said, referring to the comparatively windy conditions on Centre Court this afternoon, “I felt like my toss was all over the place today.” But Sharapova also said that she knew she couldn’t panic over the double faults, that she had to work around them. And even when they started to come more frequently in the second set, she still found her serve when she needed it. The key moment came in the second game of the second set. Sharapova had broken a despondent Lisicki in the first game and then taken a 40-15 lead. Suddenly her toss went wayward and she double-faulted twice. This was the moment of truth; was her serve going to betray her after all? But she got it in on the next two points, and got Lisicki to send two balls long. Nothing about the moment was pretty, but Sharapova had manufactured a game and kept her momentum intact. The danger had passed. Not long after, she would be up 5-1.
Of course, Maria had some help. After blowing that 3-0 lead and losing the first set 6-4, Lisicki appeared to have nothing left mentally at the start of the second. Forehands that had gone for winners for two weeks now sailed well out. Drop shots that had kept her opponents guessing now spun feebly into the net. Her own serve, perhaps the best single shot of the women’s tournament, followed Sharapova’s south. Down 2-0, Lisicki made an even bigger mistake. With a light mist falling and seemingly more rain on the way any minute—the sky was piled with thick, dark clouds—she petitioned chair umpire Louise Engzell to stop play. Engzell didn’t stop it. Lisicki, distracted, was broken again. And despite the best attempts of Sharapova’s serve to get her back in the match, Lisicki couldn’t take advantage. She seemed gutted by the first set defeat; the purposeful calm she had shown all fortnight had descended into forlorn confusion.
Which was a shame. The breakout story of the women’s tournament dissolved in the pale, dreary light and swirling breeze on Centre Court. It felt a long way from the place where Lisicki had recorded her two emotional three-set wins under the roof, against Li Na and Marion Bartoli. She wasn’t the same self-assured ball-belter that she had been in those controlled conditions. And she wasn’t the same when faced with Sharapova’s flat ground stroke rockets. The hitter was outhit.
But this is a run to build on. Lisicki came in as a wild card and left us with at least one indelible moment, her tearful burst of joy after beating Li, and her shouted answer to a question from the BBC a few minutes later:
“Sabine, can you put your emotions into words?”
Lisicki wiped away a tear and said, simply, with a smile, “No!”
With her walloped, noiseless strokes and winningly even-keel demeanor, the German is a woman to hope for.
The player who vanquished her is a woman to watch once again. This will be Sharapova’s first Slam final appearance since she won the Australian Open in 2008.
We probably won’t have to worry about her being distracted by the moment. Today, after she’d won, Sharapova looked briefly toward her box, and her fiancé, Sasha Vujacic. He, naturally, pumped his first in her direction, and then put his fingers to his temples, as if to say, “Up here, you did it up here, with your mind.” It was the right message, I suppose, but it never got through. Sharapova, sticking to her well-worn victory ritual, had turned away to blow a kiss to the crowd on the other side of the stadium. She was ignoring him.
 LONDON—The royal family can never go away. How would the papers here produce front pages? They’d have to start right up with the table of contents on page 2. At the moment, the various classes of England, as seen through their tabloids and broadsheets, seem to be split along royal lines. This morning, the city's respectable papers feature Pippa Middleton at Wimbledon yesterday—the near-royal was near the royal box, but not in it. She smiles from the front of the Telegraph, the “lady in red who cheers Murray to victory.” Meanwhile, the—how should we say this?—less respectable news outlets focus on the royal family itself, namely Prince Harry, who is pictured on the front of the Sun smiling devilishly across from a young blonde, his latest flame. Between them is this headline: HARRY AND THE NEW GIRL ARE COUSINS.
Elsewhere, it’s another good day for tennis. Federer’s loss and Murray’s win catapult the sport from the back to the front of the papers. And on from there…
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The Telegraph continues its coverage with ever bolder talk from, and about, the local kid. “Bring On Nadal: Wimbledon final is my destiny, says inspired Murray.”
There is some worry about his hip, which he tweaked in his quarterfinal, and how it will hold up when he’s running side to side against Nadal. But Murray himself says, “I believe I can beat Rafa. I just have to go out there and play and serve well and believe that I have a chance.”
—Perhaps of more interest is the paper’s handy sidebar that breaks down the most important moments of yesterday’s quarterfinal. It's called: “When Judy saw Feliciano, was she all hot and bothered?”
Warm-up
[Judy’s] sunglasses come on—was it to sneak a peek at her second favorite player?
First Set
With Lopez serving at 2-5, a wag shouts, “Come on Feliciano, do it for Judy.” She twitches.
Second Set
When Lopez wins a point after twice reaching drop shots, Judy claps before hurriedly switching her attentions to Andy at the far end.
Third Set
Andy is preparing to unleash a serve when Lopez’s shorts hitch up. Judy starts to pat her hair involuntarily and then starts to loosen her collar.
—Columnist Simon Briggs, still assigned to the grim LTA beat, reports on the beleaguered organization’s latest brainstorm: send British juniors off to the U.S. to eat up college scholarships at American universities.
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Columnist James Lawton of the Independent, whose title at the paper, if you go by his byline, appears to be “Sportswriter of the Year,” sits in Centre Court and remarks on the “poignance” of seeing a great champion like Federer slowly lose it over the course of the afternoon. “You should have seen the speed with which he slipped from some ultimate competitive grace to the confusion of the profoundest defeat. You should have seen the dwindling body language and failing technique of the man who some time ago was enshrined as the most brilliant tennis player of all time.”
—Meanwhile, for what seems like the first time since his run to the 2008 Australian Open final, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga has turned back into his lookalike, Muhammad Ali. Most of the papers make the comparison.
—The Independent mentions this amazing stat, which I didn’t know: Federer only had one break point in the entire match.
—Nick Bollettieri has been writing a column for the paper, and this is what he has to say about the upset: “I looked at the facial expression of Roger Federer; the man with the 178 and 0 record [in these matches]. And you know what I saw? Man, he looked scared. I have never seen that before. Never.”
******
It’s Brit-nickname time at the Mail:
MUZZA? HE’S GOT TO SHOW HE’S NO GAZZA OR WAZZA
To which I can only ask: What about Shazza? In case you’re wondering, Muzza is Andy Murray, Gazza is . . . well, the article doesn’t actually bother to tell you who Gazza and Wazza are, they just assume you’re going to know. I believe Gazza is ex-footballer Paul Gascoigne, but I have no idea who Wazza is and I refuse to type that word into Google.
—Maria Sharapova has been practicing this week with 2000 Wimbledon semifinalist and a man with one of the greatest names in tennis history, Vladimir Voltchov.
—The Mail also gets Tsonga in the ring, and makes the comparison quite plain: “Tsonga the Ali lookalike knocks Federer out with a mighty punch”
—Skepticism about Rafael Nadal and his injury continues here: “Blessed with remarkable healing powers, or the confidence of a trickster?” Ivan Speck of the Mail asks, sans evidence of anything tricky by Nadal. But Speck does come through with this superb closing line about the crowd at Rafa's semifinal: “The Fish jokes multiplied; it was that kind of soporific evening. Nadal replied with a few choice swishes of his racquet before it was time to say tartare.”
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It couldn't have been an easy afternoon for big-thinking Simon Barnes of the Times. How does one liken Murray’s yawn-inducing win over Lopez to the British army at Waterloo or Churchill during the Blitz?
Barnes starts gamely: “Murray has resolved to get less down on himself, to avoid those Celtic passions of self-hatred that overwhelm him when he makes an error or fails to take an opportunity.”
But he abandons the poetic road soon after; it’s just too tough to slog today. Still, Barnes comes through with an observation that I’ve also made a few times about Murray: his lack of authority, in his game and demeanor. This time Barnes sees something different: “He did a thing rarely seen by a British tennis player in any circumstances, let alone on Centre Court: he imposed his authority. He pulled rank. He was dourly intimidating.”
—Elsewhere, columnist Neil Harman and his headline writers avoid the Ali comparison for Tsonga. Instead they go for something even scarier: “Reality starts to sink in for Federer after Tsonga puts him to sword.”
Within that article, we learn that Federer won 10 more points than Tsonga, that Nadal is the 10th player to reach his 16th Grand Slam semi (Connors is No. 1 with 31), and that Murray has reached five of the last seven major semifinals.
—Also: Martina Navratilova picked Petra Kvitova from the start of the tournament, and she’s sticking with her countrywoman. Germany is apparently “uniting” behind Sabine Lisicki. And Victoria Azarenka writes, “The roof is terrific. It does not feel as though you are playing indoors.” Why do I imagine an All England Club official with a gun in her back as she utters those stilted sentences?
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There are two words of note in the Guardian. They come from columnist Barney Ronay, who describes Pat Cash, playing a senior match yesterday, as still “dashingly wholehearted.” Great phrase. Don’t tell him when I steal and use it for someone else.
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OK, it's Deep Tab time—the Star and the Mirror. That means headlines:
Murray, who “promises” to beat Nadal in the Guardian, sounds a good deal more confident in the Star:
NOW WATCH ME GIVE RAFA THE RUNAROUND
—Federer, so sadly aged in the Independent, is still a mouthy young punk here:
FED: I’M FAR FROM FINISHED
—Unfortunately, the Fish jokes get just the slightest bit more obvious in the Mirror:
NADAL BATTERS FISH BUT MURRAY CAN REEL IN SENSATIONAL WIN
—But the Mirror does report on a promising new radio technology: For “Queen of Scream” Maria Sharapova’s last match, BBC 5 Live radio introduced NetMix, “an audio experiment which allows the commentary level to be adjusted relative to the sounds of the court.” Could this be the savior of the WTA on television someday?
—The Mirror’s betting report: Sharapova is 11-10 to win the title; Federer is now 11-8 never to win another major.
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And then there’s the Sun, the cherry on top of it all. The paper begins with a smiling Murray facing a glum Judy, who is staring at a sweaty Feliciano Lopez:
“CHEER UP MUM, I WON! Murray beats Judy’s pin-up”
—Pippa appears here as well, but without the class: “Foxy Pippa Middleton was on Centre Court yesterday. Apparently she had the best seat in the house.” Ba-dum.
—The paper keeps its cool, though, and closes with a surprisingly sane and understated headline previewing Murray’s upcoming match with Rafael Nadal:
“Murray lines up semi with Rafa, now for his . . . DAY OF JUDGMENT!"
But, you know, no pressure, just do your best, that’s all anyone can ask. Whatever happens, we’ll understand.
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 LONDON—You might say, from the perspective of past achievement and name recognition, that the women’s semifinals at Wimbledon is a Snow White and the three dwarves situation. Except that all of those dwarves, as well as Snow White, are very tall, and they hit very hard. Two of them are also very loud.
Snow White is Maria Sharapova, the 2004 champion here and longtime watch hawker. She is not just the most recognizable name; she’s also the consensus heavy favorite to come through and win her second title, seven years after her first—an impressive show of resiliency. But she’s not there yet. In the second match tomorrow, she’ll face Sabine Lisicki, who has been the consensus dark horse at this tournament since she upset Li Na back sometime in mid-2010—I mean, last week. First up, though, are two other big hitters who will be battling to reach their first Grand Slam final, Victoria Azarenka and Petra Kvitova.
What these semis may lack in name recognition, or, in that most tired of all clichés, “star power,” should be made up for with scrappy, sometimes shrieky, here’s-my-chance-and-I-better-take-it desire.
Victoria Azarenka va. Petra Kvitova (series tied 2-2)
It’s No. 5, Azarenka vs. No. 8 Kvitova. These have been two of the best and steadiest WTA performers of 2011, and one of them has been due to make a major final for some time. By all rights, each of them should be desperate to take that next step now that it's right in front of them, and there should be fierce rallies to show for it.
Azarenka won their first two matches, but Kvitova blitzed her at Wimbledon last year, including winning a love second set, and she also won convincingly in the Madrid final earlier this year. I’d make her the favorite in this match.
These are the variables. Kvitova is the heavier hitter and can put the ball away much more easily. Azarenka is the better mover and more agile athlete. As for her own power, she didn’t have what it took to win on the clay at the French Open; the question is, can the quicker grass help her enough in that department? Whether it does or not, the match will be on Kvitova’s racquet. She has a bigger serve and return and should begin most rallies from a winning position.
The next question is whether Kvitova can make that advantage work for her for two full sets. She’s an interesting case, mentally. On the whole, she’s very confident in her abilities; she knows she has Grand Slam potential. At the same time, she succumbs to nerves at all the wrong moments, as if part of her doesn’t fully believe in those abilities yet—she hasn't proven herself to herself. Kvitova owned Pironkova for the better part of two sets on Tuesday, but still managed to miss enough shots to hand her the second set. Chances are, the Czech will get ahead early and flirt with a collapse at some point.
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Maria Sharapova vs. Sabine Lisicki (Sharapova leads head-to-head 1-0)
Here we have another mysterious mental case. In trying to serve out her quarterfinal against Marion Bartoli, Lisicki looked absolutely calm even as she fumbled and bumbled and double faulted her way into a third set. She looked, in retrospect, a little too calm.
Still, Lisicki, like Jo-Wilfried Tsonga on the men’s side, has been the revelation of this tournament. She’s hitting her serves with record-level pop, and in those moments when she’s not fumbling and bumbling with nerves, she seems able to do whatever she wants in a rally. Loop the ball high and into the corner; move in a crush a mid-court ball for a winner that she makes look ridiculously easy; jump for a swing volley winner. With the roof down and the ball sitting up, Lisicki’s hitting ability made her clearly superior to Bartoli. It was only close because her anxiety made it close.
Chances are the roof won’t be closed tomorrow, and Lisicki will be playing someone who, unlike Bartoli, can hit with her. In fact, Sharapova hit her off the court in Key Biscayne this year to the tune of 2 and 0. And she was just as impressive, if not more so, than Lisicki, in her demolition of Dominika Cilbulkova in the quarterfinals. Will Lisicki be happy just to be there? We know that won’t be the case with Maria. I think Lisicki will be able to play with Sharapova, but after their last rounds I think Maria’s mental edge at crucial times, especially if Lisicki gets ahead, will make the difference.
 LONDON—It was an odd sight to find the world’s No. 1 and 2 players, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, laboring in the back-country obscurity of Wimbledon’s second show court, Court 1, on Wednesday afternoon. But there was a lot to choose from today, and you could hardly fault tournament schedulers for giving the high-rent Centre Court crowd—including Pippa—a chance to see the native son and the six-time champ.
Court 1 isn't such a bad place, either. With a contemporary design, and without a Royal Box, there’s a more relaxed, less imposing, less important and stuffy atmosphere over there—there's nothing "hallowed" about it. It’s the closest that the All England Club gets to feeling like the U.S. Open. Still, even there you could hear that the action was all on Centre Court today. We knew something big was going down in the latter stages of the Federer-Tsonga match, and when the scores were finally posted inside the stadium, even Nadal had to do a double take. The same thing happened later, at the end of Andy Murray’s win over Feliciano Lopez. We heard a roar and thought the match was over. We were surprised when another, bigger, roar came soon after—"Ah, now the match is over." But no, there was yet another, titanic and extended roar a minute of so later. This time it really was over. That’s what it takes for a crowd to finish off a Murray match at Wimbledon.
Nothing quite so momentous happened out in the Court 1 countryside today. No. 1 and 2 did what they were supposed to do, both in four sets, both with a couple of shaky moments—No. 2 had a few more than No. 1—that were overcome in the manner you would expect from the world’s best players.
First up was Djokovic. He has been unsure of himself, his movement, his game, his footing, for much of this tournament, but he seemed to have put it all behind him in the first set against 18-year-old Bernard Tomic. He said that he knew Tomic was “dangerous” because he was young and unpredictable and would come in with little to lose. And Djokovic didn’t seem to take him lightly. He put on a clinic in controlled aggression and baseline variety in the first set, and it appeared that Bernie’s long Wimbledon adventure—he had won seven matches, including three in the qualies—was coming to an end.
It was coming to an end, eventually, but not before Tomic impressed a few more thousand people with his thorny, weird, almost lazy, but difficult to break down style of play. At his best, Tomic shows how much you can do with very little: You stay consistent, you mix up your spins, you hit low and flat and don’t give your opponent many angles or much pace to work with, you use the other guy's power, and, suddenly you’ve won a set from Novak Djokovic, you’re up a break in third, and the No. 2 player in the world is trying hard not to smash his racquet.
“The style of my opponent today,” Djokovic said later, “is not really something I prefer. He plays very low balls all the time and it’s really difficult to predict what he’s going to come up with.” Djokovic said he got too passive in the second set and made two many errors. Undoubtedly true, but it was even worse in the third—Djokovic started playing Tomic’s game, guiding the ball around the court. The kid was outfoxing him.
Then, fortunately for Djokovic, the kid went from wily fox to green young man again. Tomic gave his break back with four unforced errors and began to rush through his service games. Djokovic didn’t even have to play particularly well, or well at all, to win the set. He broke again when Tomic made three easy errors and double faulted at break point. All Djokovic did in that game was make two easy errors of his own, but the set was soon his.
The Serb is in the semis, and he says he’s “delighted” by that. But on court and in his press conferences, this isn’t the same Djokovic we saw this spring. It’s not a lack of confidence exactly, but he's more subdued, dulled just a little. He’s played a lot of tennis this year.
He described his play over the fortnight as “kind of up and down” and sounded a slightly fatalistic note when he said, “I mean, grass is not my favorite surface.” Djokovic knows he’s close to taking over the No. 1 ranking for the first time, but he’s “trying not to think about that.”
As for the future, he said, “I think I can play better than I did today. I think I do.” Not pessimistic, exactly, but I wouldn't call it optimism, either.
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Rafael Nadal was pessimism personified in the two days before his quarterfinal with Mardy Fish. He was “scared”; he wasn’t sure whether he could play; he “felt something really strange” in his foot, something that reminded him of the stress fracture that kept him out for three months in 2004 and forced him to miss the French Open (he might own seven of them otherwise). After a trip to the hospital—“they really blew it up,” Fish said about the whole Nadal injury situation today—it turned out that he could keep going after all, and play well enough to beat Fish in four sets. Still, Nadal said after today’s match that “my foot is not fine,” and that he had taken an anesthetic for a case of inflammation (put it "asleep,” in Rafa’s words).
In his previous match, against Juan Martin del Potro, Nadal had overreacted to whatever “really strange” feeling he had had in his heel. He has called medical timeouts during other difficult matches in the past—most memorably against Philipp Petzschner here last year when he was trailing and the German was playing lights out. But many fans claimed, and some media even implied, that this injury was a ruse; del Potro’s long and vehement complaints about Nadal being allowed to take that timeout only added fuel to the fire (though del Potro had to do the same thing after wiping out later). Nadal is admittedly not served well by the time that he takes between points, especially important points, and the way he makes his opponents play at his slow pace in general. It creates a sense that, if he’ll ignore that rule to get a psychological advantage, what won’t he do? And it didn’t help that he had already argued with chair umpire Carlos Ramos about the time he was taking between serves, when it was clear that, even though the match was being played at what I thought was a reasonable clip, he was over the limit and should have been warned—both Nadal and del Potro were averaging 26 seconds between serves at that point (20 seconds is the max at the Slams).
But are we really supposed to believe that, after hitting a forehand winner, Nadal decided, because it was a close first set (or for some reason; he wasn't losing at that point) to bend down, act like he was hurt, drag the trainer out, make up a spot in his heel where there was pain, and pretend to wince in front of the world when the trainer touched it? I’ll take his explanation, that he was worried by something that felt like an old, bad injury.
Anyway, Nadal was happy with his performance against Fish, especially in the first two sets. And he was in control for most of the match, cracking his backhand the way he does when he’s feeling confident. He made strong serves when he needed them, and put his returns low when Fish came forward. He also got a lot of help from Fish’s wayward serve and many forehand errors.
I’ll limit my observations of Nadal’s play to one, one that made me think something that, even after six years of writing about him in this column, I had never thought before. Fish was serving at 3-5 in the fourth. There was a sense of sleepy inevitability inside Court 1 by that point; I doubt there was a single person in the audience who believed Fish had even a shred of hope. The score went to 30-all. Nadal got a look at a forehand just inside the baseline. Normally he would hit this type of ball with a measured aggression, with heavy topspin, say, crosscourt and into the corner. This time, though, he charged it and drilled a hard, flat stroke down the line and followed it forward. It was chancy, a little reckless, and the ball landed long. Fish held.
Nothing terrible about that, you might say. But the thing was, I had never seen Nadal try that type of shot before, unless he was down 40-0 in a game (it’s not true, by the way, that he “plays every point to win”—he’s too smart for that). We rarely talk about his shot selection, but his discipline with it is second-to-none; he doesn't make many bad choices. Call it one more example of how Rafael Nadal earns every win he gets.
 LONDON—It feels like the calm after the storm now, doesn’t it? We went from 16 matches and various forms of madness—upset madness, royal madness, bad-heel madness—to just a few solitary, leisurely quarterfinals each afternoon. But this day, Wednesday, is a great one. We’re past the chaos, but we’re not down to the bare, tension-filled end quite yet. There are four good matches and a variety of storylines and possibilities still lingering. It’s not all about Federer and Nadal yet, in other words.
Let’s see what the papers have to say about it all. This morning I picked up the same stack and put it down in front of the same clerk who has been behind the same counter every single day of my stay. He rifled through them and punched in the prices the same way again. Each day until now, the cost had been 4.90 pounds. Each morning, he and I had said hello and goodbye and not too much more; I wasn’t sure he remembered me from day to day. This time he rang up the price and said: "5 pounds, 20." We looked up at each other. “Something got more expensive,” he said.
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Remember the optimism of yesterday on the streets of London? I told you it was reckless, too good to last. Today the papers' Murray mood comes crashing down to earth, and the Telegraph leads the way.
NADAL ALL-CLEAR PILES THE PRESSURE ON MURRAY
The paper not only has Nadal off his death bed, but he has apparently already won his quarterfinal match: “Briton must overcome two Spaniards to reach final.” I guess Mardy Fish can just head home right now.
—Elsewhere, Johnny Mac met up with Wee Mac (Rory McIlroy to you non-golf nuts) and Andy Murray at Wimbledon. Wee Mac asked JMac if he played golf. JMac said, “I get frustrated on a tennis court. Imagine me on a golf course.” Wee Mac had a good laugh at the image. (I’ll also note that McIlroy came across as a cool guy, especially considering the awkward meeting that the BBC set up for the three of them.)
—Now, finally, we get to the real drama, and the Telegraph has reassuring news for us:
JUDY STAYS LOYAL DESPITE LOPEZ CHARM
OK, so Murray’s mother will actually be rooting for her son. The paper says that the “joke got a bit out of hand”—what else was it going to do?—but that Judy had cleared . . . everything . . . up . . .
Or had she? “It’s Andy all the way,” she said. “I’m just one of a lot of Feliciano female fans—I’m in the majority—but of course family loyalty comes into it hugely.”
This isn’t over.
—Tim Henman talks about one of Murray’s smarter moves: Mixing up where he stands to return serve. He thinks Lopez is a good match-up for him because his lefty serve will roll straight into Murray’s biggest strength, his backhand return.
—The Telegraph wraps up with a nasty little number by Jim White guaranteed to annoy WTA fans, and tennis obsessives in general:
EASTERN BLOCK TAKE-OVA IS STRICTLY FOR THE DIEHARDS
The author begins by noting that there was no queue for yesterday’s women’s quarters. “On Monday, Centre Court demonstrated its long-held antipathy to the Williams sisters,” White goes on to say [I’m not personally sure about whether that antipathy is real—ST], “by cheering news of their departure from the tournament . . . [But] without the Williams, women’s tennis sheds its box office and becomes instead a procession of identikit eastern Europeans with their bouncy blonde ponytails, obsessive parental coaches, and double-handed backhands.”
Did any of yesterday’s quarterfinalists fit that bill, exactly?
—Could new technology end up finally giving us the long-awaited scientific proof that statistics are bunk? IBM’s new Pointsream stat tracker is off to a wobbly start, anyway. It estimated that Andy Murray would need to win 37 percent of points off Richard Gasquet’s first serve and 46 percent off his second serve. Murray did neither, but somehow still won in straights.
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The Independent tells the tale of lucky, plucky Evan Hoyt, a 16-year-old Brit who lost in the juniors, but did much better on the practice court yesterday. When Rafael Nadal, who hadn’t scheduled a practice before his MRI, needed someone to hit with, Hoyt stepped forward. “He’s my idol,” said Hoyt, who has Nadal’s autograph printed on his racquet bag.
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The Mirror has the skinny on the advice that McEnroe gave to Murray yesterday:
"SMILE? YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS: Mac says Andy must trash talk rivals"
“Murray needs to get to them,” McEnroe said. “He’s got to find a way to get under their skin. It should be part of his game, instead of saying ‘we are great friends and everything is wonderful.’ When I played Jimmy Connors, clearly we didn’t take a liking to each other and that spurred us on to higher levels.”
Mac might have added: “And did you happen to know that Jimbo and I are playing an exhibition in New York this summer? Good seats still available.”
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I was about to say that a second-week lull had taken hold in the papers, just as they had on the courts, when I finally turned the page to Simon Barnes. He delivers right from the first words of his column, entitled:
GLAM ROCK QUEEN OF THE COURTS ALL FIRED UP TO BATTER YOUNG PRETENDERS
“The great thing about Maria Sharapova," Barnes writes, "is that it would not matter a jot if she looked like the back end of the No. 49 bus plying between Crystal Palace and Shepherd’s Bush Green, or whether she looked like Helen of Troy. Either way, she would be out there trying to make tennis balls spontaneously combust . . . she’s a mongrel disguised as a pedigree.”
Sharapova as a bus, a woman who sank a thousand ships, and a dog, all in two paragraphs. Save this one for the high school composition textbooks—"Now this, son, is how you write sports".
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In the Mail, Charles Sale reports that McEnroe is such a hit with the BBC that they may try to get him to commentate on other other sports during the Olympics next year.
Meanwhile, his fellow ex-champ Boris Becker is finally, after many years of looking, going to buy a place in Wimbledon. Husbands, keep your eyes peeled . . .
—According to the paper, some fans who did show up for the women’s quarters on Court I yesterday were left less than satisfied after Azarenka-Paszek was moved to Centre Court.
“I paid 65 pounds to watch a rubbish match,” the Mail quoted Suzanne Smith of Winchester as saying, “and then only saw one game of a second match.”
I only quote this because I love the British term “rubbish” so much. It’s never made it over to the States; we’re left with “terrible” or “garbage,” which don't have quite the same negative punch (they're rubbish, in other words).
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According to the Sun, Murray is trying his best to take Johnny Mac’s get-tough advice.
MURRAY SAYS BIG FOUR MUST BE MEAN
Alas, meanness just doesn’t come easily to this generation. The Sun tries to help by subliminally slipping the word DISLIKE, in all caps, into the text of their story, right above these vicious words from Murray:
“I know John McEnroe says we need a little more animosity between the top players,” said Murray, who’s a boxing fan, “and it’s probably true. I think everyone would enjoy it a little more if the players were a bit more vocal about any dislike we may have for each other.”
Ah ha, so there is dislike—I knew it. Go on, please.
“But at the same time tennis is in a really good place right now.”
Oh, God, no, please, not that again. OK, sorry, sorry, keep going . . .
“I’ve seen Rafa around pretty much every day, because most of the guys will practice around the same time on their day off, normally around midday . . .”
Um hmm, right, midday, let me just write that down. And your point is?
“But I’m sure the days you don’t play against them you definitely don’t say as much.”
I see. Well, we’ve got a ways to go on the animosity front, but I guess not saying as much to each other is a start.
How do you create a pot-stirring headline out of those words? Not possible, right? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Over a picture of a menacing, bearded, fist-shaking Murray, the Sun has him bellowing, in banner type:
LET’S GET McNASTY!
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 LONDON—Every new story in tennis, it seems, is an old one. This has been doubly true at Wimbledon in 2011. The quixotic quest of a British contender? Tim Henman has been there, and not done that. Serena Williams’ exile to Court 2? She was once heard, while playing in that lowly third-tier arena, to ask, “What am I doing out here?” That was in 2005. Rafael Nadal’s delay-of-game warning yesterday? According to a colleague, Rafa and the chair umpire, Carlos Ramos, got into it on this same subject at the French Open way back in 2006.
One reason for this Groundhog Day phenomenon is that tennis appears in the mainstream news only in four, two-week cycles each year. The French Open comes along, and you hear a few stories on, say, using Hawk-Eye on clay. Then the French Open is over and the world forgets all about clay-court tennis for another 12 months. The Wimbledon equivalent to that, and the story that really never will go away, concerns the speed of its grass. When the tournament begins each year, ex-champions and also-rans return with it, this time as dressed up as columnists or pundits for the fortnight, all of them lamenting the surface’s high bounce and the lack of serve-and-volley tennis played on it.
On one level, I agree with them. One of my favorite matches over this year’s fortnight was Feliciano Lopez’s win over Andy Roddick, because it showed that a one-handed, net-rushing game, a game that used to be the standard here, can still be effective on grass. I don’t like it any more than the old-timers when I see juniors belting away with the same basic baseline-hugging, two-hand slugging game.
At the same time, though, these arguments are presented as if Wimbledon just slowed the grass down last weekend, and that it's busy slowing it down even more every night while you're sleeping. The truth is that the surface has been the same composition for 10 years, enough time so that you would think we could call what's played on it these days "grass-court tennis." In 2001, groundskeeper Eddie Seaward, who is retiring this year, changed the mix that was laid down, from 70 percent rye/30 percent fescue to 100 percent rye. He wanted more durability and firmness, and he got it. The all-rye was also cut a little higher, and the bounce was a little higher and slower. Henman noticed the difference right away that year, and it's been that way since. This year, in defending the current grass game, Rafael Nadal said that he first played here in 2002, and the surface hasn’t changed in that time. That’s true for court surfaces around the world. There’s a sense that they’re being slowed more with each passing year, but the Aussie Open has been played on a slow hard court since the late 1980s, and Roger Federer has been likening Key Biscayne to a clay court for at least five years.
The change at Wimbledon was a trade-off, no doubt, but few who watched the tournament in the years before 2001 would want to return to the old grass mix, even if they do wish it were faster now. The slicker turf was also a bumpier, patchier, less predictable surface; more important, the matches that were played on it weren't as entertaining. They were, for the most part, a serve, a stab return, and if that somehow worked out, a volley. I wouldn’t mind seeing the grass quickened—if that’s possible—and I want variety of playing style as much as the next fan, but don’t let the old-timers’ nostalgia make you think that the old grass game was somehow better than it is now.
In fact, there was talk in those days about how Wimbledon, the great doddering dinosaur of tennis, should rip out its turf altogether and join the rest of the world by turning itself into an asphalt parking lot. The consensus was that grass’s time had passed, the players had no time to learn to play on it, and it only pointed up how outdated Wimbledon was in general. Rather than do anything that drastic, the club, as it has with its other facilities, was able instead to update and renovate its surface without tossing it out altogether. No one talks about Wimbledon like it's a white elephant anymore. For most players, it’s still the Holy Grail, and the surface is simply one of the three they play on over the course of the season.
Firming up the courts has also helped unify the sport. When Pete Sampras was a kid, he and his coach made a conscious choice to turn him into a Wimbledon winner—that was the ultimate goal. With that in mind, he switched from a two-handed backhand to a one-hander and developed a net-rushing game based around his serve, all of which are facets of the classic grass-court game. But winning Wimbledon came with a trade-off in those days. That same attacking game was never going to get it done at the French Open; Sampras, seven-time Wimbledon champ, reached a lone semifinal in Paris. The schism between fast and slow court no longer exists, in part because clay and grass have moved closer to each other. This has had the effect of raising the profile of the rivalry between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. We’ve been able to see them face off in Slam finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, as well as the Australian Open, and, very nearly, the U.S. Open. Sampras and Gustavo Kuerten played superb matches when they met, but the king of Wimbledon and the king of Paris never faced off in a major final—they only played three times total, compared to Federer and Nadal's 25 so far. We didn’t think anything of it then, it was just the natural fast-court/slow-court, parallel-universe order of tennis, but now we can see that it was a loss for the sport.
Today Rafael Nadal can build his game on clay and still believe that he can live his dream of winning at Wimbledon. At the same time, while the ball is slowed more under the Centre Court roof, Wimbledon’s grass remains significantly different from clay. The surface still “takes the bounce,” according to players. It kicks through on hard serves, bounces up with topspin, and stays down with slice. It is possible to serve and volley on it; it’s just that nobody serves and volley anymore. The point is, there is no correct or superior version of grass-court tennis. Federer himself has won his titles on all-rye, and would anyone, even the staunchest traditionalist, have wanted him to play any differently than he did (besides Pat Cash, of course)? He has never served-and-volleyed as often as he did on his way to his first title here, in 2003. He recognized the change and adapted.
I loved, and still love when I see it on tape, the generally underappreciated late-1980s/early-90s version of tennis, when all-courters like Becker went up against serve-and-volleyers like Edberg, and both fought against a baseliner like Lendl. At that point, the game was in the midst of a long transition from the net back to the baseline, so different styles thrived together. The new, larger racquets had also fully taken hold, upping the general level of power and shot-making from the wooden racquet era that had just ended.
It would be fantastic and ideal if one of today’s Top 4 were a serve-and-volleyer, one were an all-courter, one were a baseliner, and one played standing on his head. But realistically, do we have anything to whine about in today’s men’s game? The Borg-Mac era gave us personalities; the Becker-Lendl era gave us quality and variety; but my favorite era—and I’ve seen all three—is the one we’re living through today. Federer and Nadal, as well as Djokovic and Murray, have given us the best matches, and part of that is because they play each other so often and are well-matched everywhere they play, from London to Paris to Melbourne. This decade, Wimbledon’s slow decade, produced the 2007 and 2008 men’s finals, two of the finest and most dramatic tennis matches ever played. I haven’t heard anyone complain about those.
Next year, when Wimbledon comes around and tennis appears in the press again, we’ll read stories about the fast old days one more time. Then we'll sit down and watch Federer and Nadal and Djokovic and Murray and forget all about them.
 LONDON—How can tennis make the front page? It’s very simple: Find a way to bring the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge—you know them as Kate and Wills—out to watch every match. The royal couple graces the covers of virtually all of the London papers this morning, and for a few hours Wimbledon has a new, youthful cache. Now what are the chances we can get them to the Regions Morgan Keegan Classic in Memphis in February . . .
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The Telegraph leads with the couple doing the Wave—called, for some reason, the Mexican Wave. Kate looks good, and William is a little goony, but he’s being a good sport. Right behind them is Billie Jean King in pearls and a black T-shirt. Not completely sure about that fashion choice for the Royal Box.
—The paper follows later with a Q and A with Boris Becker, under this headline:
I’M NOT YOUR CHILDREN’S FATHER . . . AM I?
Becker is a BBC Wimbledon commentator (a sample of his analysis from yesterday: “there’s another backhand winner from del Potro”) and one of the past champions, like Pat Cash and John McEnroe, whom the country has adopted in lieu of a winner of its own. He shows up six hours late to the interview. Asked about athletes’ cheating ways, Becker starchily maintains that sports stars are no more prone to straying than anyone else, they just have more “opportunity.” He asks the female interviewer if she knows where her husband is at that moment. She says yes, he’s picking up the children, she knows where he is.
“Ah, maybe this afternoon,” Becker sagely retorts, “but where is he all the time? What about those 15 minutes between appointments? That’s enough time for an affair!”
—OK, enough with the past. It’s time for the next chapter in the Andy Murray saga, and the Telegraph wastes no time getting it started with this headline:
"DEMOLITION MAN: Murray destroys Gasquet (and sets up clash with his mum’s favorite pin-up)"
Following this are three of Judy Murray’s tweets concerning “Deliciano” Lopez, including this one: “It’s a Felifest at Wimbledon tmrw. Twice in one day. Too much. Way too much.”
Is Judy Murray a bit much? Or is she a breath of fresh, unstuffy air through the stuffy confines of tennis? I like her fierceness, and she did make an earthy counterpart to Kate Middleton yesterday. Though I do share the curiosity with many about whether Murray would be better off if she backed off, at least publicly. He might not; like another mama’s boy, Jimmy Connors, he’s done extremely well with her there.
Whatever you may think of her Deliciano tweets, though, the mental image they call up probably beats the one we get from another message that she sent out yesterday over Twitter:
“Aaaaay, Macarena . . . Jamie [Murray] busting some moves on the player balcony . . . .”
As for the aforementioned Feli, he says that one reason he fought so hard to come back from two sets down in his last match was that he wanted to play Murray, in the quarters, on Centre—he didn’t mention Judy, but it’s safe to say she’ll be watching.
—Finally, Simon Briggs reports that at least 10 players have felt sick to their stomachs at the tournament this year. The presumed culprit is a new pasta and seafood bar in the players’ dining area.
*****
—Over at the Independent, columnist James Lawton believes that its time to throw pessimism to the wind and dare to have some hope for Murray. He thinks his display against Gasquet yesterday was the type of tennis that can win him the title. And it is: But doesn’t it seem like the perfect dramatic development—flawed hero encourages hope before once again leading nation into soul-crushing depression. Wimbledon, Britain, Murray, and massive disappointment: It’s all coming together as planned.
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Maybe some comic relief is in order. For that we head to the Mirror, which signals its approval of Murray’s improvised gesture to the Duke and Duchess yesterday with this headline:
BOW WOW!
—Things aren’t so happy for the Williams sisters, and according to the paper one of them will seek vengeance:
“Defiant Serena Williams vowed to shake off the ‘devastation’ of her shock exit by restoring her family’s battered pride.”
—The paper closes with this message from Germany’s Sabine Lisicki:
JUST CALL ME DORIS BECKER
Did Lisicki really utter this creepy command? Almost: “Steffi loves it here at Wimbledon and so does Boris. I’m enjoying myself here, too.”
*****
Uh oh, no less an authority than Simon Barnes, appearing on the front page of the Times, has picked up on Lawton’s loony idea of "hope for the future."
“Prince William and Andy Murray both appeared on Centre Court in Wimbledon yesterday, both looking immensely content with their lives. Neither can be called a king just yet, but they are both, you might say, nicely placed.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, monarchy buffs, but isn’t Wills second in line to the throne? Doesn’t dad have to come first? Don’t worry about it, because Barnes closes on another ray of rare sunshine:
“There was a feast of action for royal visitors to savour yesterday . . . and best of all, the hope of something better.”
Oh, now you know doom is around the corner, don’t you?
*****
Like the last act of a Shakespearean drama, all of the day’s themes are tied together, brilliantly and succinctly, by the Sun.
First we get a repeat of an earlier description of Murray and his royal improvisation: BOW WOW!
But the Sun is much more direct in its headline concerning the Judy-Feli subplot than other papers have been. No puns or irony here, just the plain truth:
ANDY’S MUM FANCIES HIS NEXT OPPONENT
—The paper is also equally blunt in its assessment of Venus and Serena Williams’ bad day:
SISTER AXE
—On the next page, Roger Federer is paraphrased with this headline:
I’M FEDDY TO RUMBLE
Federer’s actual quote about his next opponent, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga? Why take everything so literally? OK, if you must:
“He was the player,” Federer said, “that I expected to come through that section of the draw.”
—Finally, the Sun sums up all of the ominous hope of this moment among the British sporting public with this piece of stunningly reckless optimism:
“FUTURE KING: Andy heir to SW19 throne”
Is this play a comedy or tragedy? (Or is it, perhaps, an historical drama based on the life of Tim Henman?) We’re only in the third act, but it’s one to enjoy in its own right. The pasty, scraggly local tennis hero’s mother has fallen in love with his handsome rival. Let’s see how their match—I mean, their DUEL AT DAWN FOR MUM'S LOVE—plays out first.
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 LONDON—You might think that Manic Monday at Wimbledon would be just that, a manic, sweaty scramble from court to court and epic to epic; a dream day, in other words, for any tennis-loving journalist or fan. And it did seem like a wild ride for at least one reporter in my row in the press room. Her assignment was to get to all 16 matches, and then write about the experience. She was in and out of her seat all day, getting redder from the sun as the hours went on; but she seemed energized by it all. It couldn’t have been easy: She probably had to sprint to make it in time to see any of Azarenka’s or Kvitova’s blowout wins.
That wasn’t how it worked for me. I could theoretically have tried that same scramble, and I would have enjoyed it. But what if there was an upset, what if Serena lost, or Roger got in a fist fight with Jake Garner, or Andy Murray ordered Judy, Kate, and Wills out of Centre Court? Then what?
To guard against all of these possibilities—and I really wouldn’t have wanted to miss the last two if they’d happened—I had to spend an unfortunately large amount of my Monday parked at my desk in the press room. The downside was not seeing a whole lot of live tennis. The upside was, with two monitors in front of me and every court televised, that I got to see a lot of tennis, period, on a wild day of it. Watching Federer and Nadal get behind in first-set tiebreakers simultaneously, I couldn’t decide whether I was loving the moment, or whether it was all a bit too much to handle, or even follow properly. It’s a trade-off, really. If you sit in the press room, you can, with a little bit of ingenuity, see every important, exciting, weird, and fun moment on every court. But if you do, you won’t have had a chance to participate in those moments, the way you do when you see them live. On the other hand, once you leave the press room and commit to seeing something in person, you’re going to miss 10 other things happening on other courts. Which is fine—I came to Wimbledon because I love live tennis.
Either way, live and on the tube, by the late afternoon Manic had turned to just plain Mad. Here are a few recollections from my vantage point at the “center” of it.
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Most Illuminating Comparison
You might think it would have been the sight of Rog and Rafa trying to slip out of their tiebreaker troubles together, but we already know what those two look like when they’re playing at the same time. What was more interesting was seeing Serena-Bartoli side by side with Gasquet-Murray.
The men’s shots curved more, and there was a cat and mouse aspect to their rallies. There was a lot of flash and style, but there was also something detached about the competition, as if they just wanted to go about their business without confronting each other directly. This is the general tone of men’s tennis these days, but Murray and Gasquet seemed to be as much artists as warriors out there—to be fair, though, Murray won in part because he brought a well-measured emotional aggression to this one.
It was the opposite in both cases in the women’s match. There was no bend on the ball; it went flat and straight and fast. And while neither woman got in each other’s face, exactly, there was more of a willingness to throw themselves forward emotionally, to play the warrior role—Serena always does this, of course, but today Bartoli made a conscious effort not to let her take up all of the emotional “space” in the arena.
There’s only one conclusion that can be drawn: Men are sensitive creatures.
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Most Galvanizing Moment
I was deep into the Serena-Murray split screen on my two tubes when it slowly became apparent on my computer’s live scores—three things to follow at once!—that Caroline Wozniacki was in trouble. I switched over intermittently during the third set and was pleasantly surprised, as I have been many times in the past, by her opponent Dominika Cibulkova’s bouncy, feisty energy—one writer here refers to the diminutive Slovak as Pocket Rocket. While I have my, um, reservations about that nickname, the concept is sound.
Before I knew it, someone in the row behind me was calling out “match point for Cibulkova”—we tend to just say these things automatically, but the alerts can help our colleagues. I switched back over, saw her serve, saw Wozniacki lob back an OK return, and saw Cibulkova waste no time in running around it and banging it with a free and easy arm into the corner for a winner. That’s how you finish a match! Her smile as she waved to the crowd was nice, too, as Court 2—not such a bad place, after all—rippled with contagious energy. These are the little moments, tucked away on small, packed courts, that make the Slams the bristling, bustling events that they are. I saw it on TV, but I was happy just to see it.
*****
Most Surprising, but Not Really All That Surprising Development
I wrote recently that Bernard Tomic is tough to figure. The same could be said for Bulgaria’s lean, wispy and deceptively talented Tsvetana Pironkova. Great game—versatile, with feel and subtlety; at Wimbledon, and against Venus Williams, it’s a winner. She had Venus thrown off from start to finish. Don’t disappear again on me, TP, watching your win wasn't a bad way to spend a “lunch hour”—at, like, 4:00 P.M.—inhaling a (very good) beef and horseradish on white bread sandwich at my desk.
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Most Surprisingly Fun Moment
Along with every court, you can also watch press conferences at your desk. My favorite of the day was Marion Bartoli’s, though I was in the room for that one. It’s always nice to see a player search for answers and try her best to speak to a reporter’s specific question. Bartoli was revealing and smart and giddy, and she even looked at her questioners with interest. I also liked her American-isms. This is how Bartoli described her previous match, a 9-7 win in the third over Flavia Pennetta, “Well, I was suffering the most definitely against Flavia,” the Frenchwoman said. “I mean, that one was crazy.”
Of course, it’s easier to be revealing and fun and polite when you win. Andy Murray was about as light-hearted today as I’ve ever seen him. He talked about how it hurt to shave his upper lip, so that makes him less willing to shave when he should. But he kind of regretted it today. If he’d known that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge—a.k.a. Kate and Wills—were going to be there, he said, he would have buzzed off "the puff."
*****
Most Near-Epic Moment
Nadal-Del Potro was a vintage modern match. It had the good and the bad: the winners, the gets, the spins and rallies and power that make us drop our jaws a few dozen times a match. It also had the medical time-outs, for both players, and warnings for slow play, given to one player, Nadal, though both were slower than the legal 20-second limit, that we’ve come to expect.
Nadal’s heel injury—he’s getting an MRI—planted a seed of doubt in his head, and I thought del Potro might end up the winner. He appeared to be the stronger and more confident player for much of the match. But not for the parts that counted the most, the tiebreakers. Del Potro was up 3-0 in the first and lost 8-6, and he missed three routine forehands in the all-important third-set breaker, after playing some fine tennis in the preceding games. But credit Nadal as well. He wasn't at his best in those same preceding games, yet early in the tiebreaker he dug up with one of his best returns of the match and grabbed the momentum from there—it was an ambush. I would say that this is what great champions do, but I’m guessing you already know that.
Finally, as darkness was setting in, I made it out into the warm air—it felt wonderdul—and up to the press seats inside Centre Court. No more upsets of fist-fights were possible; Federer had won, and Tsonga, whose play has been a revelation these last few rounds, had taken care of David Ferrer. I sat down to a classic tennis scene, the classic tennis scene. A full and buzzing Centre Court crowd. A sense of light fading, which only enhances the atmosphere. A final match of the day, with all eyes on it. And, most of all, a long, almost-epic struggle on court. Then came the capper, the best of the sport's recurring moments, when one player walks out from a changeover and tries to serve it out at 5-4. There’s no escaping the responsibility; there are no alternatives but ultimate success or sinking failure. Nadal stepped into that responsibility, got his first serves in, and held at love.
It was a sane and fittingly impressive ending to an impressively insane day. I would tell you that that’s what great champions do, but I’m guessing you already know that.
 LONDON—Leave it to Serena Williams. Not to make herself a threat at Wimbledon immediately after coming back from a year on the sidelines, though she did do that. Not to show off, for the thousandth time, her uncanny knack for playing her best when she absolutely must, though she did that as well. Not even to make the press room a livelier and less predictable place, though she certainly scored in that department. Asked if her loss today was a positive sign for the depth of the WTA, Serena said, “Yes, I’m super happy that I lost. Go women’s tennis.” Sarcasm was detected by some.
No, what Serena brought back to tennis was the type of edge-of-your-seat, heart-in-your-throat excitement that you can only get when a player of her stature and persona is fighting for her life and on the verge of defeat. I don’t feel that when Nadal or Federer or anyone else at the top of the game is about to go down, but I did today as I was watching Serena hold off four match points and bring herself to the verge of an unlikely third set against Marion Bartoli. I had no rooting interest in this match, but it was still the most exciting I've seen, from an emotional standpoint, in this tournament. To me, that’s why it’s good to have Serena back.
But that’s a story for the future now, because this day belonged to Bartoli. I’ve always enjoyed her strange brand of tennis, mainly because, after the dancing feet and the shadow stroking and the painful-looking service stance and all of the other rigmarole that her and her father have layered onto her game, she makes such fabulous contact, and, with her extra-long racquet, creates sharp and daring angles with the ball that we haven’t seen from anyone since her fellow two-hand-forehander Monica Seles.
At the same time, I've also wondered what the extra stuff was doing for her. Does it really help you to serve 10 shadow serves before your real one? Is your backhand going to be any more accurate because you’ve taken three practice cuts with it before a point? Is a fist-pump at the end of the first game of the match going to carry you all the way through? I liked the game, but not the shtick.
But today Bartoli said something interesting when she was asked about her bouncing and fist-pumping, and what they do for her as motivation.
“Usually during those matches when I was playing against some great champion, like Serena or somebody like that, I was a bit more shy, not showing too much on court,” Bartoli answered with her usual mix of intelligence and candor (she’s one of the few athletes who, before uttering a standard-issue answer, will say, ‘I know this is a cliché, but . . .'”). “My opponent was really like taking all the space," she continued, "and I was not able to do really anything, just appear on the scene. So it’s really important for me to believe that I can win the match and overall act as a winner.”
So, in their way, Bartoli’s antics are a way for her to assert her own personality on court, a way of not being a passive actor, someone who is, as she said, just “on the scene.” This was especially important for Bartoli today, she said, because of how “huge” Serena’s personality and reputation are, and how intimidating it is to see her on the other side of the net. Bartoli said that she had to stay in her “bubble” out there if she was going to face up to the pressure of beating Serena, and she was especially proud of how she handled losing three match points at 6-5 and still “bouncing back”—Bartoli knows her English slang—to win the tiebreaker. How many times have we seen players get close to the finish line against Serena, fail to cross it, and then cave in to the seeming inevitability of defeat? Bartoli’s between-points activity may be over the top from an aesthetic perspective, but they kept Serena from “taking up all the space”—emotional space—on the court.
Bartoli also had some recent experience with adversity to fall back on. She saved match points against Lourdes Dominguez two rounds ago and beat Flavia Pennetta 9-7 in the third in a wild match this weekend. At one stage, Bartoli said she “lost my mind for 10 seconds,” and ordered her parents away from the court. “I’m not proud of that,” Bartoli admitted today, but mom and dad were back in her box on Court 1—sitting too far away, fortunately, to be sent off. Bartoli said the two previous wins were in the back of her head when she started the tiebreaker today, and the confidence she had from them helped her stay calm.
What else did Bartoli do well? She matched Serena in the serving department, especially on big points. She hit with her from the ground and even backed Serena up much of the time. And she defended her vulnerable two-handed forehand from Serena’s crosscourt angles, a play that the American was using with more and more success as the match went on. Bartoli was even feeling gutsy enough to move inside the baseline on Serena’s first and second serves. I thought it was a foolish play, but taking her return early is what got her a break at 5-5 in the second. She popped the ball up the line with her backhand before Serena was ready and earned a break point. Bartoli made all of her unconventionality work for her.
 What about Serena? She said afterward that she missed too many balls, didn’t have much feel, and that Bartoli played so well that she looked over and wondered who this version of Marion was and where she had been hiding. She said that if she keeps it up, she’ll be “Top 5, minimum.”
Serena is a famous slow starter, and that was true again during this tournament. She’s a player who needs to be threatened, to feel the threat of defeat. That’s a great and almost unique trait to have—she’s one of the few humans who loosens up under pressure, who needs and relishes pressure—but it’s also double-edged. Its gotten her out of a hundred desperate situations, but it has also contributed to putting her in those situations in the first place. If you go to the brink often enough, you’re going to go over it eventually. Serena might have survived one more time if it hadn’t been for the quality of Bartoli’s serve. It was going to be tough for the Frenchwoman to win a rally at match point—Serena basically stopped missing on the MPs against her—but she didn’t have to worry about it after her last serve caught the line. Even Serena couldn’t do anything about that.
“At the end of the day,” Serena said about this Wimbledon, “I think I did pretty good.” She said she came here expecting to win the title, but she didn’t act as devastated by this defeat as she had after other losses here, though Serena chalked that up to being “a good actress.” See, she’ll always make the press room a little livelier. And even in a straight-set defeat, she’ll put a tennis fan’s heart in his or her throat.
The sounds I’ll remember most from this match will be the wild shrieks and “Allez!’s that Bartoli made after winning crucial points. They may have sounded a little wacky, like everything she does. But they were the sound of someone learning that she could play more than a bit role on the big stage. They were the sound of her creating some space for herself on the court, and filling it up with the best tennis of her career. Bartoli said afterward that the win was her biggest yet, and “a dream come true.” She would probably admit that that’s kind of a cliché, but it doesn’t make it any less sweet to say it.
 LONDON—Doesn’t Wimbledon aim for moderation and understatement in all things? It does, except, it seems, when it comes to its second Monday. Then the tournament suddenly snaps, throws all of that pent-up caution and discretion to the wind, and schedules everyone all at once all over the grounds. That’s where we are, the Monday scramble, and there are worse places for a tennis fan to be. Let’s take a thumbnail look at what we’ll see, from start to finish, as we make our slightly crazed way across the All England Club on Monday.
*****
Centre Court
Andy Murray vs. Richard Gasquet (tied 2-2)
This could be the big one of the afternoon. They played a toothy, muscular five-setter here a few years ago, which Gasquet blew. He has a good chance tomorrow in this battle of thwarted talent, and he might even be the favorite, if it wasn’t for the crowd. But he’s not the favorite.
Venus Williams vs. Tsvetana Pironkova (Pironkova leads 2-1)
Pironkova does two things well: Play at Wimbledon, where she made the semis last year, and play against Venus Williams, whom she's upset twice. But Venus has already passed one serious test, against Date-Krumm.
Rafael Nadal vs. Juan Martin del Potro (Nadal leads 5-3)
This could be something like last year’s Nadal-Soderling fourth-rounder. The most dangerous player has his moments, but Rafa raises his game to match him and wins going away in four.
Court I
Marion Bartoli vs. Serena Williams (Williams leads 2-0)
Bartoli has played a lot, and expended a lot of emotional and physical energy in the last two rounds. Serena has won without her best and now is getting close to becoming the “favorite.”
Michael Llodra vs. Novak Djokovic (Djokovic leads 2-1)
Llodra likes grass, and his lefty serve and volley will give Djokovic a different look from the norm. But Djokovic has the best return in the game right now. Only trouble: He says that he hasn’t been moving that well at Wimbledon so far.
Mikhail Youzhny vs. Roger Federer (Federer leads 10-0)
Federer is cruising, and this fellow 29-year-old has been one of his old colleagues/whipping boys since the juniors. Check the head-to-head record above: That’s not a recipe for an upset.
Court 2
Shuai Peng vs. Maria Sharapova (Sharapova leads 2-1)
Peng has had a good year, and she’ll shovel a lot of balls flat and down the middle and make Sharapova come up with winners. Maria hasn’t been quite as sharp as her French Open form might have predicted, but she should find a way here.
Caroline Wozniacki vs. Dominika Cibulkova (Wozniacki leads 6-2)
Top-seeded Wozniacki is back on Court 2 and, as they say, under the radar, which must be a relief. Grass helps give her a little more pace to work with, but Cibulkova can run.
Mardy Fish vs. Tomas Berdych (never played)
Has Fish hit his ceiling again (has he surfaced, in other words)? This one is up to Berdych. He’s more explosive, and more inconsistent.
Court 3
Nadia Petrova vs. Victoria Azarenka (tied 2-2)
Here we go with the Azarenka watch. Again she’s looked good, again she has a shot at the semis, and again, as she did with Li Na at the French, she plays a veteran who on paper she should beat. She lost that time, though, and Petrova is even with her in their head to head.
Lukasz Kubot vs. Feliciano Lopez (Kubot leads 2-1)
Lopez has surged in 2011 and recorded his best Slam win, over Andy Roddick, in the last round. Will beating Roddick for the first time give him a lasting boost? Lopez’s serve could take him far. Or will he be Feli being nervous Feli one more time?
David Ferrer vs. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (Ferrer leads 1-0)
I’m thinking this could go something like Ferrer’s loss to Gael Monfils in Paris. Ups and downs from one set to the next, depending on Tsonga’s form, concentration, and nerves. It’s on the Frenchman’s racquet.
Court 12
Sabine Lisicki vs. Petra Cetkovska (never played)
Lisicki hits all-out virtually all the time, and she’s feeling comfortable right now. Cetkovska, ranked 81st, has made a run against an ill Radwanska and a bad Ivanovic. But she’s probably not quick enough to hang with the belting Bollettieri-ite.
Petra Kvitova vs. Yanina Wickmayer (tied 2-2)
Kvitova has shown a tendency to go away when she’s challenged at majors this year. She’s the bigger hitter and better player this time; the question is whether Wickmayer, a stronger opponent than what Kvitova has faced so far, can hang with her long enough to force the Czech to try something different.
Tamira Paszek vs. Ksenia Pervak (never played)
If Murray-Gasquet and Nadal-del Potro are the day’s high-profile matches, this battle of 20-year-olds is at the other end of the marquee (the part with the lights missing). Pervak beat Petkovic and Peer, and Paszek was supposed to be good at one point (though she’s still only 20). Beyond that, maybe you can tell me what you know.
Court 18
Bernard Tomic vs. Xavier Malisse (Malisse leads 1-0)
A battle of superb ball-strikers from different eras out on the back court. Prediction? Rallies. Long rallies. Good rallies.
*****
See you from the grounds on Monday.
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