A Good Head of Steam

by Pete Bodo

For some years now, we've gotten an earful about new markets and roadmaps taking tennis places where it's never gone before. It's hard to quantify the real progress of those dreams in a world where the deal rules, or to find eloquent, concrete expressions of those ambitions and hopes. It's hard sometimes even to understand just what the plans mean, what they really represent, or why they matter. It's hard to know why we should care, or how all of it might impact our lives, never mind the lives of others, many of them far away and as mysterious to us in their ways and wants as we are to them.

Today, though, we have a tangible symbol of this vision and the grand ambitions helping to create and shape it. We have before us Li Na, a Chinese national who will meet Kim Clijsters in the Australian Open final, hoping to become the first player of either sex from her vast, rapidly-developing nation to win a Grand Slam tournament—a feat, should she be successful, that may have repercussions far beyond those that might accrue in similar circumstances in any other nation. China, after all, is a giant; for most of the 20th century, she was called a "sleeping giant." Today, she's awake. And tennis is just part of it.

Therefore, Li is not just another player hoping to win just another Grand Slam. She is both an individual and an icon representing of a nation—one of 1.3 billion people, few of them engaged in, but a staggering number aware of, the enterprise in which Li is involved. She is playing for herself, and undoubtedly for her restless, snoring, tennis-playing husband and coach, Jiang Shan. But she is also the vessel containing the yearnings of her countrymen and women, a role she has no choice but to accept, and whether that helps or hinders her is one of the more tantalizing questions looming before us.

My gut feeling is that Li will bear the expectations admirably. The words that come to mind in contemplation of Li run to adjectives and nouns like...disciplined, patient, tough, cool, focused. Li is 28 years old; she knows the stakes as well as the pitfalls. And she's no stranger to the demands of this particular tournament; she crashed the semifinals last year as a lowly No. 16 seed, beating, in succession starting in the second round, Agnes Szavay, Daniela Hantuchova, Caroline Wozniacki, and Venus Williams, before she lost to that other Williams, Serena, in the semis in two tiebreaker sets.

This year, Serena is MIA and Li improved her seeding position by seven places. She's taken out two players seeded ahead of her, No. 8 Victoria Azarenka, and No. 1 (and world No. 1) Wozniacki. When you compare her results to those of Clijsters, her opponent in the final, it's pretty clear that Li has passed a more severe series of tests.

But what about Clijsters—isn't the three-time Grand Slam champion (and, now, eight-time major finalist), while a few months younger than Li, far better prepared for the task at hand? Clijsters has been No. 1 in the world, and even though she's won only three of the seven major finals she's played, she must have learned much of value in those matches, all of it useful against an opponent who's in her maiden final.

Melbourne presents—by far—Clijsters'  best chance to slough off the criticism that she can't win a Grand Slam event other than the U.S. Open (a problem that most WTA pros would kill to have). In a curious way, then, Clijsters' excellent record in New York drives some discontent with her overall record and doubt about her prowess—it's a positive with a nasty, negative undertone.

The sum of all these mitigating circumstances is that if Li will be playing with the weight of China on her shoulders, Clijsters will be competing against her own record of Grand Slam shortcomings, a clear and much-loved favorite who's never really felt comfortable as the Queen Bee. Which condition exerts the most influence—and in what way—will probably determine the outcome.

I expect that the women will go right at each other, bring all their firepower to bear. Statistically, they are more similar than different. In fact, Clijsters trails Li by a single errant shot in the unforced error-to-winner ratio. Clijsters has hit 125 winners in this tournament so far and made 148 unforced errors. Li's numbers, respectively, are 153 and 175. So Li is -22, and Clijsters -23. Not much to choose from there. The only caveat in this analysis is that Clijsters had an extraordinary first-round win over former world No. 1 Dinara Safina. Clijsters made just four unforced errors in that 6-0, 6-0 blowout, while hitting 17 winners.

It's clear that both of these women like to powder the ball, and are willing to take their chances. The forehand of each has been particularly deadly. But all in all, Li seems to have played more commanding tennis. Against Wozniacki, she was down match point but survived and went on to win the match. Wozniacki was up a set and a break, 4-3 in the second, when the great turnaround began. The next five games were fought as brilliantly, bitterly and artfully as anything we've seen these past few weeks, and I can't help but think that they were an omen.

Here's an interesting stat: Even with the lopsided Safina match in the count, Li has broken serve four more times (32) than Clijsters, and she's played a better set of servers. As far as their serves go, Clijsters get a slight edge in average speed (around 160 kph for first serves, just a few kph better than Li), but Li has posted a better first-serve conversion percentage, hovering right around 70 percent. Li may be the more effective returner, while being Clijsters' equal as server.

When thinking about the opportunity before Li, two questions come to mind. First, how will she handle the pressure? At some point in this match, unless she freezes like a deer in the headlights, the significance of what she's poised to accomplish will become real in a way that may have not been up to this point. It could happen any time, but most probably would happen at a critical time. How she reacts to that pressure—and you really don't know what it's like until you've been there—could have an enormous bearing on this match. And Clijsters has the experience to know what to do if Li should get tight or hesitant.

I also think Li will need to play as decisively and crisply as she did against Wozniacki if Clijsters runs off the rails, which she's done in a number of her matches in Melbourne. It's safe to say that going into a match with Clijsters these days, you know she'll give you a few windows of opportunity. Her lapses are as appalling as they are inexplicable. Suddenly, her game just is not there. She usually works her way through the rough patch, and thus far at the tournament nobody has really made her pay. But then, Clijsters has played just one seeded player before she met No. 2 Vera Zvonareva in the semis, and that was No. 12 Agnieszka Radwanska.

Radwanska is on the mend from foot surgery in the off-season. Clijsters presented her with a number of opportunities of the kind that a defensive baseliner like Radwanska simply must convert in order to have a chance. Radwanska fell short, and that was the end of that. Not only is Li seeded higher, she's as tough a No. 9 seed as you're apt to find at any tournament. Based on how she's played so far, Li will make the most of those opportunities. She did in Sydney, where she beat Clijsters in the final of the biggest tune-up event.

I like Li's chances. She's built a good head of steam. Clijsters hasn't lost a set yet, it's true, but I think Li makes Clijsters nervous in a way that, say, Zvonareva does not. So I'm looking for Tennis Australia, which prides itself as being the "Grand Slam of Asia-Pacific," to crown the game's first Chinese Grand Slam champion.