!90354896 by Pete Bodo
Sometimes, like yesterday, it must be hard to be Maria Sharapova. There she was, a glamorpuss all decked out in a pale purple dress with fluorescent chartreuse straps and details. Impossibly tall, leggy and all-around marvelous, more than a little intimidating in a variety of ways, she fired forehand rockets and cracked huge serves; she provided the familiar soundtrack, shrieking, grunting, screaming as if a passel of Comanche squaws were merrily chopping off her fingers and dragging out her intestines for the dogs to eat.
At select moments, she dramatically turned her back to the net and retreated toward the back of the court. She'd pause, her right heel elevated as if frozen in mid-step, and appeared to strain to hear some voice in her head. We all waited for her to conclude her communion.
Sharapova dominated the tennis stage known as Arthur Ashe stadium, the way only a ranking drama queen can. Only her efforts didn't overshadow or cow Melanie Oudin, the platinum-haired youngster on the other side of the net - the one in a dusty-blue and navy dress (the main appeal of which may be that it takes dirt and stains pretty well), the 5-6, solidly built 17-year old in the two-tone tennis shoes.
Those shoes were pink sherbet and banana yellow, and unique in that it's hard to imagine them matching with anything. Those blinding colors also made the shoes look bigger than they are, which served to make Oudin look even smaller. It looked like a match between a siren peeled right out of the mythic September issue of Vogue and a smurf who had wandered off the side of a kindergardener's tin lunch box. But the smurf was battling the siren heads-up, on even terms. She was unperturbed by Sharapova's orchestrated hysterics (for she will suddenly abandon her screaming for points and even games at a time, to no ill effect), and content to do her work in stoic silence, except when her degree of exertion demanded faint and lady-like puffs: uhh, uhh, uhh.
All this helped Oudin charm and win over the crowd - how could you not admire the Spartan, steely spirit of the sprite. Who could fail to acknowledge that she was working less like a 17-year old teen-ager who writes self-confidence inducing slogans on her shoes (Believe, she had scrawled on each of sneakers) than like a mature craftsman, relying on simple, modest, sturdy tools: in this case, determination, courage, and desire.
Add those three things together and you end up with someone like Oudin, a player who loses herself in her work, sheds her self-consciousness, and avoids shortcuts. The process is enough to transform a 5-6 smurf with few conspicuous weapons into a terrific competitor who can succeed beyond anyone's expectations - save her own.
As Oudin said yesterday after a riveting, sometimes ragged, never dull and undoubtedly inspiring three-set, 7-5 in-the-third win over Sharapova: I think the biggest weapon can be mental toughness. It doesn't have to be a stroke or a shot or anything like that. If you're mentally tough out there, then you can beat anyone. . .it's not going to be easy to beat me, and I'm not going to back down at all."
Oudin reminds me of the young Tracy Austin. She's comparably fiesty, although Austin's manner was more confrontational. Oudin's feet are as quick. Austin was more grooved and steady, but Oudin has more variety (her backhand, both the two-handed drive and the one-handed slice, is a versatile tool). Austin's serve was vulnerable, so is Oudin's; but like Austin, Oudin has the speed and quick reflexes to protect it better than you might expect. Oudin likes to get to the point - not just on the court, where she prefers to probe and force the action, but in conversation. She may be wide-eyed and breathless in a typically teen-aged way, but ask her a question and you get a direct, brief answer:
Q: Were you nervous when you had breakpoints and stuff like that?
A: "I was. I think I was really nervous in the beginning of the match. I started to calm down towards the second. And on breakpoints, I wanted the point so badly that sometimes I overplayed. But I won the crucial ones, which is good."
Most of you saw the match, so I'm not going to engage in a blow-by-blow. The only real caveat a skeptic might attach to this result is that the match contained 16 break games, eight by each woman - more than 50 per cent of the games (31 in total) were breaks. Oudin's eight breaks can be partly explained by Sharapova's serving woes - she hit 21 double faults, which is likely to be more than the men's champion will have hit in his entire tournament. Any player who puts up those kind of numbers can't be too mystified about a losing outcome.
The eight breaks Oudin surrendered are of greater concern, because she served reasonably: six double faults, and a 62 per cent first-serve conversion percentage. When I asked Sharapova in her presser if she thought a girl who could be broken so often on something like her average serving day could survive some of the big returners waiting downstream in the draw, she misunderstood the question and thought I was accusing her of having a lousy return.
Oh, well. . .
!90354990 After the match, I spoke with Brian DeVilliers - the naturalized U.S. citizen (originally from Botswana) who's been Oudin's coach since she was 9. He made an interesting comment about Oudin's serve: "With the girls, serving between 90 and 110 miles per hour is the perfect speed that allows a returner to generate good pace. So in a way staying at the lower end of that spectrum is almost better - it demands more from the returner. 90 to 110 is a danager zone - right in the honey pot of the receiver."
It's an interesting theory I hadn't heard before. Incidentally, the biggest serve I saw by Oudin was a 103 mph ace she hit in the fourth game of the third set, to go up, 3-1. Most of the time, Oudin was serving in the mid-to-high 90s (first serves).
Oudin is still a youngster, and despite her small stature, she's got plenty of muscle. She has a swimmer's back; her shoulders are very wide, and sloping rather than sharply angled. Her upper-back is thick. As DeVilliers said, "Skeptics may say it's hard to survive with that serve, but shes still young - and she'll get stronger. She'll be able to control it better. We'll definitely be tweaking it. She can use hips better. We need to get all of her upper-body strength into the serve, somehow. And you know, she's a very strong girl. If she gave you a bear hug, she'd break your shoulders."
The game plan going in, according to DeVilliers, was to put a high percentage of first serves into play (the results were mixed), to serve to Sharapova's body, and to use slice to mix things up and change the pace (Oudin executed that part of the plan perfectly). She has a fairly long trunk and relatively short legs; thus, she has a low center-of-gravity. It comes naturally for her to play from a crouch. More than once, Sharapova would powder a service return - only to see Oudin,unfazed, dig out and blast back a penetrating answer. I think it was Ernest Hemingway who define "courage" as "grace under fire."
BTW, it's a little easier to accept the 16 breaks in this match when you consider Sharapova's go-for-broke style. Sloppy tennis is contagious. And it can be hard to find rhythm against a player who has a knack for alternating ghastly unforced errors with smoking winners. Someone asked Oudin if Sharapova's feast-or-famine serving was a distraction. She replied: I knew she was struggling with her serve. She gave me some double faults - crucial, crucial points. But, I mean, a lot of things go into it. It was really tight in the match. I mean, it was like 5-All in the third (when Sharapova hit her last double-fault of the match, to be broken). Nerves were kicking in and everything. No, I thought I stayed focused pretty well. I didn't think it really affected me with the double faults."
Except in a good way, she might have added.
Oudin is fleet and tough, she likes to take the ball on the rise (she's tried using the more fashionable western grip, but using heavy spin and engaging in longer-than-necessary rallies takes her out of her comfort zone - which tells you that she already has a specific vision of how to best play the game). She plays inside the court, and uses that backhand slice-drive combination astutely. The best game she played was the one that enabled her to hold for 1-1 in the second set after losing the first and allowing Sharapova, feeling her oats and shrieking like a banshee, to hold and build confidence for a potential knock-out break.
First point: Oudin played a great combination of two sliced backhands that pinned Sharapova back at the baseline; on the third shot, she drove a winner cross-court with two-hands.
Second point: notes illegible, except that Oudin, showing signs of fatigue and effort, began to issue faint grunts as she exchanged shots. I assume this was a rally that she won. I know she won the point.
Third point: Oudin hits a second serve, Sharapova goes-for-broke on the return, but Oudin scrambles and returns a slice cross-court. Sharapova goes down-the-line, but Oudin is there to put away a forehand, cross-court.
Fourth point: Sharapova gets hold of another serve, driving the ball cross-court with her forehand. But Oudin is there, crouched low, to fire back a two-handed drive that elicits a forehand error from Sharapova.
The key elements in this game were Oudin's mobility and anticipation, her free use of either backhand shot, and - not insignificant - her ability to withstand the pressure Sharapova tried to apply at a time when she could have backed Oudin against the ropes.
The kind of sand and poise Oudin showed throughout the match isn't learned, although she herself doesn't believe it was a gift of the cradle. "I don't think I was born with it. But I've learned to do that. I mean, that's how I've been for a long time. You know, all the years of training, my coach pushing me so hard, just getting through years of ups and downs and everything. I've learned to fight super hard."
!90354796 DeVilliers theory is that being a twin, Oudin has been fighting for her share of life's rewards from roughly the time she popped out of the birth canal. "Even at 11, 12, 13, Melanie was prepared to stay out there all day to win. She was like that today, but what really impressed me was the way she handled those first few big shots Sharapova smacked her way. Melanie has never seen anything like that."
Oudin needs to get used to those shots, what with the Williams sisters still lurking in the draw, but most of all she needs to tackle the obstacles as they come. If she grows a bit in the years to come, her ambitions will be more easily realized.
"We're praying for an inch," DeVillliers said, ruefully adding. "But I don't think we'll get it."
Perhaps it won't matter. Oudin is tall where it most counts.