Moments after Vania King shocked Slammin' Sammy Stosur on the Grandstand court at the US Open late this afternoon, a dozen teen-aged boys began to leap around, waving their arms, calling out, "Vania, Vania!" She glanced their way, and one shouted, "Wristband!" Whereupon King swiftly peeled off the damp terry sleeve and casually tossed it toward the forest of upraised arms - landing the wristband right in the hand of the kid who had called for it.
It was that kind of day for Vania King.
I had no intention of watching this match, and stumbled on it only because I was expecting to find Lleyton Hewitt and Juan Ignacio Chela having at it like a pair of junkyard dogs. But when I saw that King had taken the first set, 7-5, despite Stosur's painfully obvious advantage in height and power, I decided to stick around - just in case things got interesting. Tennis is a game awash in "small" players lurking in the weeds, ready to deploy mental strength and tenacity to overcome the realities of physique and even talent. Hewitt, in fact, wrote the book on that score.
Stosur, enjoying the greatest extended run of her career, was riding her career-high ranking of no. 15 and, of even greater concern to King, hitting the crap out of the ball. If you haven't seen her lately, Stosur, who's 5-7 and 143 lbs., has become quite a physical specimen - sculpted hard, but not ripped to the point where she looks like a sack stuffed full of walnuts. There's a thickness and solidity in every inch of her; her skin appears taut as the skin of a snare drum. Her quads are substantial, as befits a player who enjoys serving and volleying, but she falls just short of stocky, which is the point where muscles can begin to work against the finer skills required of a player.
Usually, Stosur plays in shorts, so when her skirt flew up today, you could see thick bands of pale skin above the tan line on either leg. There's a little bit of Martina Navratilova in Stosur these days,from the obvious fruits of her dedication to the puzzling lack of confidence and consistency that remain a part of her entire package (it's the bit that rattles around when you shake the box). For Stosur's story is that of a conspicuously gifted player who, until recently, spent as much time pulling it all apart, mentally, as she did putting it all together, physically.
At times during the match, I was struck by Stosur's, well, bigness. . . She cuts an impressive figure on the court and perhaps more important, creates the impression that she's all business. That suggests a degree of focus and discipline that any player can fake at specific moments in a match, but only the authentically and clearly determined players can project over the course of an entire match. It's one of the reasons that a loss like the one Stosur suffered today can be devastating, but becoming impervious to such setbacks is yet another small figurine in the champion's Matryoshka.
It was evident straightaway that Stosur had her work cut out for her in the second set. King is an articulate, clever girl who plays articulate, clever tennis. A good sense of the court's strategic possibilities and nimble feet are a tennis-playing girl's best friend even when, like King, she's in no danger of bumping her head on a door frame - except perhaps the door of a gingerbread house. King is a diminutive 5-5, and gave away at least 30 pounds to Stosur, although we'll never get a precise figure - at least in this area, many WTA stars are girls first, tennis players second.
But despite her disadvantage, or perhaps because of it, King also cut a striking figure. While her face can be animated and mobile, her expression throughout the match was stony. Her posture was terrific; she walked with firm, purposeful steps, shoulders flung back, head held high. It may be impolite to compare a fine young lady to a canine, but the wonderful thing about small dogs is that they don't know they're small, which is about how King played today.
The terms of engagement were obvious in the first few games of the second set. Stosur was running around her backhand, bent on walloping forehands that would back up King, transform her from pit bull into golden retriever. King held her ground near or inside the baseline as much as she was able, determined not to give an inch, waiting for just the right moment to turn the tables and find an opening on Stosur's backhand side.
"In whole match, I tried to focus on being aggressive," King would say later. "I didn't feel comfortable the whole match because she's so strong, always giving you a different shot to look at. So I had to really focus on going for my shots, because I knew that if I were passive, for she for sure was going to dictate."
Well, well, well, I thought, after watching the first few games of the second set, Here are two women actually playing high-risk, high-quality tennis.
It was certainly encouraging to watch Stosur serve like her gender had nothing to do with it, and mildly surprising to watch King more-or-less match her - at least in terms of that critical willingness to use the delivery for something more than kick-starting a rally. Alas, there's only so much you can do when you're 5-foot-5, even when your heart is in the right place.
"I'd served for the first set three times, and that was tough," King would say later. "Sometimes I'd be looking at the radar gun and then I started trying not to look, because it was kind of depressing. Sam was serving at least 20 miles per hour faster than I was, so I knew on my serve I had to be consistent, try to get the first one in."
The first break points of the second set materialized in the fourth game, when King fell behind 15-40. But she survived both - the latter with a bold attack punctuated with a winning forehand volley. She went on to win the game, and I thought: Great hold. The next few games were holds as well, with Stosur battering away but King giving not an inch. My notebook says, King weathering the storm well. . .
Stosur served at 3-all, and wiped away a break point with a stinging body serve that King fielded badly, probably because she had to duck behind he racquet to dodge a direct hit. Stosur followed that with a 117 mph ace, yet King continued to pursue a policy of aggressive resistance, scratching and digging for Stosur's backhand as single-mindedly as a badger. She found that weaker wing at deuce, and scored the break when Stosur double-faulted.
!90309494 Stosur broke right back behind a massive, swinging forehand volley; it was the kind of bounce-back that shook my faith in King, for the woeful tale of the underdog who had a match in the palm of his or her hand, only to allow it to slip away, is tennis's equivalent of the cinema's tear-jerker. No matter how often you see it, you still can't help but cry. And it was at just that point that King put the stamp of authenticity on her upset. A precise passing shot here, a sneak attack on the net there, a crisp backhand to force a volley error at break point and King had another break.
Although King won the first two points serving for the match, Stosur reeled off the next three (two of them via King groundstroke errors) to give Stosur a last breath of hope. After a brief rally, Stosur pulled the trigger on yet another atomic forehand; it was the right time but it landed in the wrong place, just outside King's forehand corner. One point later, King chose to attack and won the match at the net, on the second volley she hit. I liked her explanation for why she chose to attack:
"I'd tried a serve and volley earlier, and kind of knew that if I served to the backhand, she would slice the return cross-court (the safer shot) most of the time. So I thought: On a big point like this, she probably won't go for anything spectacular. . .so I'd have a chance to go for a shot. And I knew that if I went to the net, it would make me be aggressive, no matter what. And it worked."
That comment was representative of the match, which offered much in the way of nuance and color. Since I haven't exactly been obsessed with Vania King in her four-year career, I wondered if she was always so composed and pulled together - if she competed nearly as well in most of her matches. After all, this is the first time King's gone beyond the second round at a major - and she's only in the draw because she was awarded a wild card (ranked no. 107 at entry time, she missed the cut-off by two places). Was she always so mentally strong?
"Mentally?" King paused, and laughed as something crossed her mind. "Actually, I beat Sybille Bammer in the first round in Los Angeles. It was a solid match. But then I lost to (Ana) Ivanovic. That one was close; I won the second set, and I was up a break at the start of the third, but. . . I lost it a little, mentally, so I ended up losing. A few days ago, my coach (Erwann Leridant, who works with King alongside Tarik Benhabiles) told me: I don't want to see you losing it mentally in the next match, no matter what. . ."
King took his stern warning to heart, and it showed in the set of her jaw and the poise with which she weathered the storm. But the moment she won the match, King's face lit up and she resumed being a gregarious, smart (perhaps too smart - part of her problem last year was a lack of motivation), shrewd girl. As many of you know, King sang American the Beautiful live and acappella on Arthur Ashe stadium before Andre Agassi played Marcos Baghdatis at this tournament in 2006, and she also sang the national anthem before a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game.
Yesterday, on the grandstand, she hit all the high notes in her best performance yet.