Cruising in the Shadows

NEW YORK—You already know what the big news was here on Friday. But Roberta Vinci’s stunning win over Serena Williams wasn’t the only stellar performance in Arthur Ashe Stadium. This will almost surely be the only time that the world No. 43’s performance overshadows outstanding ones by Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, and Vinci’s better-known Italian countrywoman, Flavia Pennetta. In the interest of equal time, here’s a quick look at how Vinci’s three more famous colleagues advanced to the finals.

“When you want too much something,” Pennetta said after her 59-minute, 6-1, 6-3 win over Simona Halep, “and you really like say this is the moment I have to do this and that, always it’s gonna be a big mess.”

Pennetta was talking about her own run to the U.S. Open final, of course, but she could also have been describing Simona Halep’s day at the office in their semifinal. Pennetta came to New York as the 26th seed; Halep as No. 2. Pennetta wasn’t sure she would be physically ready to play this Grand Slam; despite having reached the quarterfinals or better at the Open five times prior to this year, she had no expectation of success.

“I don’t think too much about the draw,” Pennetta said. “I go match by match.”

Halep, for her part, says she tried to play this tournament with no expectations, but after reaching the finals in Toronto and Cincinnati and beating Pennetta in Miami, she was the clear favorite to do it here as well. Halep looked nervous to start on Friday, and things only got worse from there. It was, in the end, a big mess.

“She was better emotional than me,” Halep said. “...I was flat. I tried. It was better than Australian Open when I gave up during the match. Here I tried to find a way to play better, but I couldn’t.”

Pennetta began by mixing speeds well. She cracked her backhand whenever she had the chance, and the result was a laser into both corners. But she also threw in drop shots and followed them to net. While Pennetta was on her front foot throughout, Halep was on her heels; she could never get herself out from under the Italian’s pace and accuracy. The match could be summed up with this simple, symmetrical statistic: Pennetta hit 23 winners; Halep made 23 unforced errors.

“Today I play really well,” Pennetta said. “I mean, I didn’t make mistakes. I was focused. I was aggressive.”

No wonder then, that when Pennetta fired her final forehand winner into the corner on match point, all she could do was throw her head back and laugh.

“All in all,” Novak Djokovic said after his 85-minute, 6-0, 6-1, 6-2 win over Marin Cilic, “it was from my side a very solid match.”

Perhaps only the world No. 1 could describe a Grand Slam semifinal in which he won 83 points and held the defending U.S. Open champion to 39 as merely “solid.”

But there were mitigating circumstances to this one: Cilic had twisted his ankle, and he had trouble pushing off in his last match, against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, as well as this one.

“The foot was causing me obviously some trouble with the movement,” Cilic said, “but Novak was able to expose me much more today.”

Outside of the scores, Djokovic’s stats were unspectacular—16 winners, 13 errors, three aces—but they didn’t need to be. From a physical standpoint, this counts as an important win because it will leave him as rested as possible for the final on Sunday.

But it also might help mentally. Djokovic knew coming in that Cilic was hurting. Often that will distract a player, but if anything it did the opposite to the Serb. If his opponent wasn’t going to beat him, he looked bound and determined not to beat himself, and he maintained that attitude through three sets without a letup.

“It felt great to be able to perform as well as I did today, at this stage of the tournament,” Djokovic said, “again, knowing that Marin carried that injury for last couple of matches. I didn’t allow that fact to distract me too much.”

Cilic could only echo Djokovic’s self-assessment.

“Novak was extremely focused today,” Cilic said. “He played great.”

Coming from a guy who has lost all 13 of his matches to you, that’s a compliment.

“It’s got to be the right point,” Roger Federer said after his 92-minute, 6-4, 6-3, 6-1 win over Stan Wawrinka, “right frame of mind, the right place to do it.”

Federer was talking about his now-famous SABR return, where he sprints forward as his opponent tosses the ball for a second serve and hits a half-volley from just behind the service line. Federer certainly chose the right point, place, and frame of mind to do it against Wawrinka. This was the match where the play went from gimmick to tactic.

The last time these two played in a Grand Slam, at the French Open, Wawrinka pounded Federer from both sides in a straight-set win. This match started with something of the same feel; Stan was thumping the ball early. So Federer went to the SABR right away, trying it three times when Wawrinka served at 1-1. While he didn’t win all three of those points, the move rattled Wawrinka. Federer broke his serve, and more important, broke Stan's rhythm. He never trailed.

“Him,” Wawrinka said of Federer when he was asked what had made the match so difficult, “the way he’s playing.

“He’s moving really well, for sure,” Wawrinka continued. “He’s reading well the game, and so he’s trying really to stay on the [baseline], not to go back. He’s also serving better than I’ve ever seen him serve.”

Federer has been in "vintage" mode since his wins over Djokovic and Andy Murray in Cincinnati, and he stayed there on Friday. He wasn’t broken, he hit 29 winners, was 13 of 17 on serve-and-volley points and 22 of 28 at the net overall, and was moving like it was 2009, if not 1999. Federer was especially good at running around his backhand, hitting as many forehands as possible, and getting them to penetrate.

One residual benefit of Federer’s SABR-rattling may be that his reactions on normal service returns will quicken a bit. He took one Wawrinka first serve out wide in the deuce court and flicked it down the line to set up a winner. If his return has improved, it could prove crucial in the final, whether he actually uses the SABR or not. Djokovic has feasted on service winners in each of their last two Grand Slam title matches, both at Wimbledon.

Call it one more trick in a matchup that doesn’t, according to Federer, need any tricks.

“I don’t know how it is for him,” Federer said of playing Djokovic, “but I feel like he doesn’t need to adjust his game as much, either. I think it’s a straight shootout, and I think that’s the cool thing about our rivalry.”

Judging by the way Federer and Djokovic played their semifinals, it will be a straight shootout to watch on Sunday.