American Stories

PARIS—If chair umpire Eva Asderaki had wanted to be consistent, she could have called a hindrance on virtually every shot hit by Varvara Lepchenko and Francesca Schiavone in the third set of their match in the Bullring today. The noises of pain that had caused Asderaki to dock Virginie Razzano two points against Serena Williams on Monday were downright meek compared to what Lepchenko, and particularly Schiavone, were letting out on this blazingly hot afternoon. But there was no reason for consistency here. If ever a match justified its grunts and shrieks, its moans and screeches, its “Ah-hee!”s and “Ah-huh!”s, this was it. Lepchenko and Schiavone staged a war of attrition that was tailor-made for the bloody-looking clay in the Bullring. By the middle of the third set, they had locked horns and wouldn’t let go.

“I’m a fighter,” the forthright Lepchenko said afterward, “in tennis and in life.”

This was a fight, nothing more and nothing less. It wasn’t the prettiest contest, or the most thrilling from point to point. Many of the longer rallies consisted mostly of moonballs. But with Lepchenko battling for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team at the unlikely age of 26, and Schiavone battling to stay in the tournament she loves best, it turned into the most desperate match I had watched so far this week. At a certain stage, Lepchenko’s shoulders seemed to be stuck in a permanent slump of exhaustion, while Schiavone was having trouble putting one foot in front of the other. Once the rallies began, though, they chased each ball until they couldn’t chase it anymore. During one long point, Schiavone’s grunts had increased in volume with each sliding get she made—on one, she screamed her standard, Ah-hee!; on the next, she chose her alternative, “Ah-huh!” When she finally couldn’t track the last one down, Schiavone threw in the towel and let out a straight-up, one syllable, “Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!”

Lepchenko’s fighting colors came through most clearly in the final game. She had served for the match once at 5-4 and nervously double-faulted on break point. This time she again began nervously, going down 0-40. From there, though, she hit freely and finished with what may have been her most decisive point of this three-hour match. She sent a fearless forehand crosscourt and took an even more fearless full-swing backhand volley out of the air to end it. There were fist-pumps, there were smiles, there were hugs with her family—she had won the war. Even Schiavone, in a nice show of sportsmanship, rushed up to the net to shake her hand. It seemed that the Italian just couldn’t stop running.

Lepchenko has nearly qualified for the U.S. Olympic team, an unlikely but fitting accomplishment for this Tashkent native whose entire reason for coming to the Unites States was for tennis. In what’s becoming a standard backstory for the sport, Lepchenko left Uzbekistan with her father and sister (but without her mother) because she felt, as she said today, “There was no future for me, no future for my career—I wouldn’t be able to make it as far as I am now.”

What makes this particular version of the Seles-Sharapova-Jankovic story even more surreal is that Lepchenko didn’t end up at the famous Bollettieri Academy. Instead, the family landed in rusty Allentown, Pennsylvania. During a Challenger event there, she met a “super nice” lady and tennis enthusiast named Shari Butz who housed her, arranged for free court time, and essentially became her surrogate mother. (It took Lepchenko’s real mother four years to be able to make the move to the U.S.)

Mom and Dad are still in Allentown, but Lepchenko, who became a U.S. citizen last year, has traveled on to bigger places, namely the USTA’s training center at Flushing Meadows. She still visits her parents on weekends, because Allentown is a “relaxing place to be.” But she quickly added, with a smile, “I also like to go out in New York.”

After the Australian Open, where Lepchenko lost in three close sets to Daniela Hantuchova, she talked to USTA player development head Patrick McEnroe, who told her, “We need more women in the second week of Grand Slams.” Lepchenko, who said the loss to Hantuchova had only made her hungrier, told him she was her girl.

Here she is, at 26, late of Tashkent, late of Allentown, in the second week of a major, and, for the moment, an Olympian. Does this make sense? In at least one way, yes: Lepchencko, in its immigrant, go-wherever-it-takes grit, feels like an authentically American story.

At the same time that Lepchenko was slugging that last backhand volley past the 2010 French Open champion, her fellow Flushing Meadows trainee, Christina McHale, was winning the first set over the 2011 Roland Garros winner, Li Na. It looked like it was going to be one of those days for Li—one of those days when she misses everything in sight, that is. McHale, whose forte is consistency, appeared to be ideally suited to take advantage.

Li said, somewhat mysteriously and I assume sarcastically, that she “just followed” what McHale did, because she thought she was the “queen of the court” in the first set. Her revolt came in the second, when Li found a pattern that worked for—i.e., hitting her forehand crosscourt for a winner. An outgunned McHale had no answer for that, or for Li’s heavier hitting in general, and her shots began to land progressively shorter. At 2-4 in the second, she had chances to break, but Li came up with winning plays each time. In the end, McHale was run off the court.

McHale said that she would learn from this loss. That’s a predictable answer, but with her you know its true. One of her early coaches has said that he never met a player who knew exactly what to care about and what to let go, and that tunnel vision and emotional control have kept McHale slowly marching upward, despite her lack of obvious weapons and a few crushing defeats at the hands of top players—the fact that she was able to take a set from someone of Li’s stature is a small victory in itself. McHale knew it, too; she said she was happy to reach the third round, because it was the farthest she had been here.

Lepchenko’s story makes us feel good because of its miracle quality—it shows that persistence really can produce success in virtually any circumstance. Sloane Stephens, on the other hand, is the charismatic media darling who is always good for a quote. McHale, who turned 20 last month, offers neither of those things. She’s a quiet New Jersey girl who, when she was asked today what her strengths were, said this:

“I think I like to mix it up, like hit—mix up the height of the ball and use my forehand. I think all parts of my game could improve still, get stronger. Yeah.”

But McHale’s story is also the story of American tennis at the moment. You take one round, and one ranking spot, at a time. You beat one French champ, you lose to another. You know nothing will be easy. You fight, because that's all you can do.