I was up late last night and back in front of the TV early this morning—I pretty much staggered into the living room at 8:00 A.M. and got right to the Roddick-Safin match. I’ve never fast-forwarded between points before, but I guess there’s a first for everything. Who said these Aussie Open late nights were fun? Was that me? What was I thinking?
OK, let's go straight to the rundown:
Serena Williams: The Serena gets called a lot of things, but “a mystery” is not usually—OK, ever—one of them. Yet that’s the word that came to my mind as I watched her come back from the brink against Nadia Petrova last night. How are we supposed to reconcile the flat, sluggish, shank-happy Serena of the first set with the fierce and committed—not to mention very good—Serena who won the next two?
First, there was the racquet, which looks significantly different from her old Wilson. Apparently she’s “testing” a new one, but it could just as well be an old-fashioned Wilson Pro Staff. The mystery to me is how she and her sister ever played with their old racquets in the first place. If those sticks were anything like the versions sold to rec players, they had far too much power for a pro. Then there’s Serena's fitness and speed. She looks a little thicker, but she still tracks most balls down. While she's lost a step in my opinion, it’s still rare for a ball to get by her for a clean winner. And despite breathing hard between points and plodding her way up to serve, she still played her most energetic tennis late in the third set.
The only way I can explain it is to say that Serena is a world-class competitor first and a world-class tennis player second. It’s not just that she wins big points and doesn’t blow leads; it’s that the idea of losing focuses her to the point where her technique and anticipation actually get better over the course of a match. In the first set, her strokes were wristier than usual; she didn’t have that same extension through the zone she’s always had. I thought at first that she had made adjustments to them to get more topspin. But no, in the second set, with her survival on the line, she was back at full extension (particularly on the backhand side) and her shots had their old world-beating conviction.
One more note on Serena: She’s never played a “pretty” game, and her match with Petrova was much more dramatic than attractive. But one reason she’s able to come back after long layoffs is that she has the game’s fundamentals wired into her body. I mean the basic, first-tennis-lesson fundamentals: get your racquet back early, take little steps, bend your knees, extend through the hitting zone. (Her open-stance backhand is all her own.) Serena’s faithfulness to these things can make her game look rudimentary (particularly around the net), but it’s worth the trade-off. Maybe her success is no mystery after all.
Nadia Petrova: The Russian served for the match, but she didn’t blow that game; Serena upped her level with startling quickness. Petrova’s bigger problem was the emotional roller-coaster she was riding. She wears her feelings on her sleeve, which is endearing; but it also keeps her from focusing and staying on an even keel. She’s kind of all over the place, which is exactly where you don’t want to be on a tennis court.
Roger Federer: Sire Jacket is flying under the radar mainly because there isn’t much left to say about him. But I’ve got three small observations: (1) The blue looks good; (2) Last night he was getting testy when he lost single games. Even the way he slapped the balls to the ballboys after holding serve looked a little disdainful; (3) Next time you watch, keep an eye on his head. He makes it a part of each stroke. When he hits a slice backhand, his head snaps downward. In a replay of one crosscourt forehand pass, you could see Federer keep his head completely still while his body rotated around it; looked kinda Exorcist.
