Dinara: Any Questions?

!Dinara by Pete Bodo

Today, Dinara Safina moved one step closer to completing one of the more remarkable transformations we've seen in tennis in recent years - her metamorphosis from unpredictable head case (every family ought to have one of each - boy and girl) into reliable, takes-a-licking-but-keeps-on-ticking champion, lacking only that elusive Grand Slam title singles title that would not only justify her present ranking atop the women's game, but more-or-less retroactively validate a full year of rock-solid professionalism and consistency almost any woman might envy.

The makeover seems that much more dramatic because it's been so perfectly expressed in her physical appearance; if you didn't know better, you might think that at some point Dinara pulled late-career Lindsay Davenport aside and asked, Come on girlfriend, give it up. How'd you do it?

It wasn't very long ago that Safina looked loaded with baby fat, which only made her look beady-eyed and older than her 21 years. It didn't help that she spent a lot of time on court huffing and puffing, and that was on the changeovers. Safina now is fit, although the price she pays for nudging the six-foot mark is deducted from her mobility. However, she's reduced her liabilities and compounded her assets by becoming lean, packed with well-disguised muscle, and physically disciplined in the way all players who aspire to sticking it out, tournament after tournament, must be: she's resolved to running; to working; to grinding, no matter how listless or discouraged she might feel, or how hopeless the situation appears.

And for a while today, it looked pretty danged hopeless.

In Victoria Azarenka, Safina faced that most dangerous kind of player: a rising young star who, just a few months ago, won her breakthrough title (Miami, a sub-major), and is so conspicuously hungry that you want to fling the crust of your sandwich jambon onto the clay. Two days ago, Azarenka had run Ana Ivanovic, the defending Roland Garros champion, out of town, giving up just five games. What better way to back that up than by counting coup on Safina, who's given up fewer games (five) en route to the quarterfinals than anyone but Mary Pierce in 1994, who failed to win the final that year.

Safina, though, is no Pierce (that would be Maria Sharapova), although making the comparison with another tall, sturdily built woman is a good way to underscore just how much Safina's altered physique has improved her general mobility. Azarenka is no midget herself (5-10), and she moves better than Safina. Hail, she moves better than some of the bantamweights of the WTA. So the match-up posed some potentially uncomfortable questions for Safina, and at the start it looked like she would have plenty of trouble answering them.

Azarenka got off to such a blazing start that within minutes, it seemed, Safina had lost more games to her (six) than she had thus far in the entire tournament. Azarenka belts the ball with Seles-like fury, and she shrieks with a Seles-like ardor. Her two-handed backhand, especially cross-court, is a chalk-seeking missile. I don't know what this lusty young lady from Belarus is afraid of, but it sure ain't missing a tennis shot. I can think of half-a-dozen WTA performers, including some awfully good ones, who might benefit from adopting some of Azarenka's reckless disregard for error-making. To some, the best way to avoid making errors is by taking a little off the swing, applying a little more spin, or adjusting the plane of the stroke. Azarenka has a better idea: the best way to avoid making errors is by. . . hitting winners!

What Azarenka lacked today was Seles-like consistency, less in terms of keeping her errors to winners adequately low than in keeping her focus at the blue-flame level throughout the match. When Azarenka hits the ball, there's an awful lot of stuff happening, most of it while both her feet are off the ground, and most of it good. But whoever took her out of the box and put her together didn't tighten all the bolts. The good news for her is that the fix doesn't require disassembly. And one thing is for sure - they sure got the girl's heart to fit perfectly.

So at the end of the first set, it was gut-check time for Safina in more ways than one. She loses to Azarenka, and the entire least-deserving-number-one-in-recorded-human history narrative gets writ large in the red clay. Given the stakes, and Azarenka's competitive gusto, it was a tough assignment, but Safina rose to the occasion. When it most counted, and through the final two sets, Safina was nearly as aggressive but considerably more consistent - a net plus. And while we all know that self-flagellation, racket-hurling and self-loathing are engraved in her DNA, the way she accounted for herself made you wonder - can this really be Marat Safin's sister?

Safina wasn't afraid to lose and she wasn't reluctant to win. She stayed in her moment, even for those periods when Azarenka was bombarding her with vicious drives and probing for all those buttons that you can push in a player whose worthiness is sometimes questioned. Taking advantage of Azarenka's youthful lapse after the first set, Safina ran off two breaks to build a 4-1 lead to start the second. The girls were quite loud with each other, Safina going with the visceral grunt while Azarenka stayed with the banshee shriek.

Azarenka won back all her lost territory, but the energy and focus it demanded was too much for a young and still-growing player whose mind hasn't developed quite as quickly as her game. She relaxed slightly in the ninth game, and Safina pounced to take advantage of the lapse. She dished the ball back and watched as Azarenka self-destructed in a way that might have made Safina nostalgic for herself at 19. Serving the ninth game at 4-all, Azarenka's mind went slack and she pegged four errors to be broken at love. She knew what went wrong in the match, too. She's a straightforward young lady who seems to have no trouble figuring out what she's feeling, and how to express it without getting overly dramatic.

She said: "I just have to learn how to play better in these moments (at 4-all). It's all experience, which I have to learn from, and hopefully I'll do better next time. . . It was pretty big that I didn't really do anything with that game, which I should have. I think that was it."

Of course, Safina then needed to hold at 5-4 -  which she did via two Azarenka service return errors from 30-all. The challenger was so upset by those that she flung her racket, head-first, into the turf. The stick didn't crack, so she tried it again, with slightly better results. Venting proved useless, though, and when Azarenka suffered another painful break in the first game of the third set, she caught herself and arrested a swat that would have sent the otherwise innocent ball she was holding somewhere in the vicinity of Aix-en-Provence.

From there, Safina called upon the virtues that had enabled her to get back into the match. She kept complete control of her emotions. Azarenka was streaky, but Safina called the bluff. She seemed to know that as furious and stormy as Azarenka's game was, there would be inevitable lulls. Safina's main job was to keep the ball in play and the pressure on long enough for those lulls to occur, and to take full advantage of them. She played a match and revealed a character that radiated maturity.

I wasn't at my most eloquent when, in Safina's presser, I posed this question: I think many people will write after this match that you proved something today about your mental strength and your fighting quality in a Grand Slam event.  Do you feel this way yourself, or is this an issue already for you gone?

Safina replied: Well, if I will not fight in the quarterfinal of a Grand Slam and being No. 1 in the world, then obviously I'm not deserving this spot. So this is an issue. This is something that I have, you know, that I fight till the end. For me the match is never over. But I think today I still didn't play my game. This was not enough. I mean, it was enough, my fight. . . but I hope from the next match that I will play completely different and I'll start to dominate from the first point."

Now there's someone with her eyes on the prize.

No Safina press conference is complete without the obligatory Marat portion, and while I wasn't the one who first mentioned his name, I was glad when someone broke trail for me. For a question that I felt worth asking did occur to me. Now that Dinara has so successfully remade herself into everything that her brother never was, did she ever feel, well, guilty, or weird about that?

"Well, overall we're actually quite different persons. I'm totally opposite of him, so... It was his weaker part, I guess, his emotions. It was also for me. It's good that I was managed to change it. I knew this is my weakness, and I deal with it. That's why I think I did such a big jump."

Earlier in the session, Safina had twice used the word "revenge" (she'd lost to both Azarenka and her own next opponent, Dominika Cibulkova, this year). But I could think of at least one other player from whom Safina might want to carve her pound of flesh, and when I brought her name up, I thought I saw Safina's eyes dance.

But all she would say was: "She (Serena Williams) still has to play quarters tomorrow. You're thinking way too far (ahead). Let me. . . I just finished my quarters and I'm a little bit tired. I still have the semis, so I don't think that far."

Oh, of course not . . .