* !Picby Pete Bodo*
It looks like the problem that Melanie Oudin developed after her magical U.S. Open run in 2009—you know, that "tightness", and inability to hit through the ball no matter how hard she tried because of her nerves—is a handicap solved.
Oudin won the first WTA title of her career in her first opportunity yesterday in Birmingham, England. She took the honors from Jelena Jankovic, a vastly more experienced player and former No. 1 who was playing her 27th WTA final. Perhaps that rich history was a mixed blessing, in that Jankovic has lost more of those big matches than she's won (12-15).
Calling upon wiles not everyone thought she had, Oudin played a nicely textured match, especially in the tempo department. As she said, "I'd hit one shot then hit a totally different shot like a slice or drop shot. I also held my ground well and used her pace. She's really consistent but by doing all that I got her to make some errors. I don't think she served as well as she did [Sunday], but I'll take it."
Thus, Oudin became the first woman since Kim Clijsters won that U.S. Open in 2009 to bag a main-tour title while ranked outside the Top 200 (by virtue of the win, Oudin rose to no. 122). The main factor in Oudin's resurgence seems to be her decision, taken back at the end of last year, to part with her coach since age nine and, ultimately, join the USTA Player Development program.
A trial run at the USTA facility in Boca Raton, Fla., didn't really work out. It was not until Oudin, a native of Georgia, got out of her comfort zone and emigrated to New York that things began to click. She moved into the guest house on the property of a suburban Westchester County family that has a son in the same USTA program, and threw herself into a grueling fitness and practice regimen.
"So far I've been so busy that I don't really have time to feel homesick," Oudin told me when I visited with her a few weeks ago in New York, before she traveled to France to play as a wild card in the French Open. "It's been four hours of tennis and two hours of fitness every day, at least. I have no time for anything else. Where I had a lot of friends in Boca, I don't know anyone here. But the important thing for me now is tennis. I'll worry about the rest later."
The cloistered life and intensive work clearly paid off, as did Oudin's involvement with the fleet of USTA coaches, including Jay Gooding and Jorge Todero, under USTA director of player development Patrick McEnroe. The game plan she brought to the Birmingham final—where she started in qualifying and thus won more more matches than it takes even to win a Grand Slam event (eight)—was clearly one which Oudin had help formulating.
Now that Oudin's name has migrated a little higher in the sports pages, it's as good a time as any to correct a little revisionist history. The knee-jerk response to Oudin's very name, once she began to struggle after that unforgettable U.S. Open—where she upset Elena Dementieva and Maria Sharapova on her way to the quarterfinals (she was finally stopped there by Caroline Wozniacki)—has been to dismiss her as a flash in the pan. She came out of nowhere, the thinking goes, and just got lucky to hit a torrid patch at such a big event.
But the reality is that Oudin was charging, and pretty hard, in the months preceding the U.S. Open. She just missed the direct-entry cutoff for Wimbledon, but qualified and had three quality wins in the main draw, defeating a dangerous grass-court player in Sybille Bammer, followed by Yaroslava Shvedova and Jankovic, who was ranked No. 6 at the time. Oudin finally lost in the fourth round to Agnieszka Radwanska. That's a pretty good two weeks of work.
Although her ranking shot up into the 70s, Oudin still had to qualify for Stanford, Los Angeles, and Cincinnati. She succeeded in making the main draw at each event, but had the misfortune to draw tough opponents in each: Marion Bartoli, Daniela Hantuchova, and Ana Ivanovic, in order. Oudin's ranking peaked at No. 68 on the eve of the 2009 U.S. Open, making her high-quality play seem more part of a continuum than an aberration. And the momentum (and ranking points) helped drive her as high as No. 31 not long thereafter. She may have been many things, but flash in the pan was not one of them. The truth is that was crushed beneath the burden of huge expectations; if there's such a thing as too much success, too fast, Oudin experienced it.
I wondered if, after her confidence evaporated and she began to drift, Oudin sensed that people regarded her with a measure of pity, or even derision. Did their eyes say, "Poor Melanie. . .?"
That touched a nerve with her, and Oudin could not keep the hurt from creeping into her voice when she answered, "I love how people act like this never happens to anybody. I'm like, 'I can name 10 people who had this kind of thing happen—who have been Top 30 or 40 and then they go down.' The sophomore and junior years (that is, second and third) on tour are the toughest, and that was my 2010 and 2011. So you go back, make a fresh start. It happens. Everyone goes through downs, it's just how you come out of them."
Oudin may be out of the downs now; it will be interesting to see if she can keep it up. She had extra motivation to do well at Birmingham, although she was loath to say much about it until she won.
"I knew the only way I would get a wild card (into Wimbledon) was if I did really well here—but I wasn't even going to think about it. I didn't want to put any pressure on myself. I just wanted to play—if I got the wild card, great. If I didn't, I'd go home and train then play the U.S. hardcourt series. I was okay either way."
For a tennis player, managing pressure is not just part of the job description. It sometimes borders on an art. Finally, Oudin may be on the road to mastering it.