The day got off to a great start – with Martina Hingis and Shahar Peer (pronounced "Pe-air") finishing a match that was halted last night at a set apiece. They played in the Bullring, the court with the best press seats I’ve ever sat in (see my “Blake Blinks” post), at 1 P.M. on a bright, sunny day when the colors really popped and, from such a close vantage point, the players and match were as compelling and eye-holding as good theater.
We're all familiar with the Firekitten and her game, but Peer was hugely impressive for those of us who hadn’t gotten a good feel for her from an up-close and personal vantage point. I was reminded once again that if most people could watch top level tennis from courtside, this would be the most popular game on earth.
Hingis opened with a break in the long first game, but Peer broke right back. Having exploited the drop shot successfully the previous day, Hingis was now playing something like a parody of what we think of as the Firekitten’s signature game – excellent use of court space, lots of changes of pace, liberal use of slice and the drop shot.
Peer’s response was: don’t bring that garbage, sister! She ran down Hingis’s most devious drop shots and answered every off pace ball with a roundhouse swing off either groundstroke wing. You know how, when you really punish the ball, it kind of exudes this little cloud of vapor, and a fine, gentle shower of yellow fuzz. That was Peer.
She’s got an interesting, very athletic game; remember that for when you’re at a tournament and you see she’s first on Court 11 somewhere. Okay, the serve – especially the second serve – is easy to attack. But Peer is a great mover, in an inconspicuous way, and she has excellent timing – so much so that her feet often come off the ground when she meets the ball, indicating that she is getting absolute “oomph” into her shot. In fact, at times she looks like a piece of toast, popping up out of the old Krups; if she were expending any more kinetic energy in such a concentrated way, she’d probably explode. She held for 2-1.
One thing I noticed about Hingis in the next game was that she’s lethal when she has enough time to set up and hit the ball with her body moving forward; she really gets her mass into it. But Peer was playing well enough to keep her on the run, and she was threatening until the Firekitten decided to change her strategy.
Starting in the fourth game, she dropped all the cute stuff and tried to transform the match into a rock fight, turning up the heat and pace. It was like she thought, It’s better to go through her than around her,
It worked. Peer couldn’t quite hang in, and pretty soon thing were breaking down – exploding, but this time not in a good way. An elbow here, a forearm there. She looked at times like a broken doll, although she made a fight of it. The Peer Bear, anyone?
In her presser, Peer talked a little bit about the leap her game has taken this Spring:
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Yeah, I mean, I beat top 10 player (Elena Dementieva) first time in my life. I had very good matches. I beat also Anastasia (Myskina) last week (sic – note: Peer won the Tier III event in turkey before Roland Garros, recording her first two wins over Top Twenty players when she blasted Groenefeld and Myskina).
I had a good tournament, first time for me reaching the fourth round. I'm really happy the way I played (at Roland Garros).
Yeah, I mean, it's only my second year on the tour. I play against many good players. I think slowly, slowly I started to beat them also. Last year I started the year 200 and I finished top 50. I'm not rushing.
I just think I have to keep going and work hard. Slowly, slowly, to go step by step.
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Peer also said some interesting stuff about her Israeli army basic training, and playing in Dubai (technically, she’s not allowed to enter any of the UAE sheikdoms, as she’s an Israeli national) in her presser, and I was given some private face time with her afterwards.
Peer is a charming girl, with an open, oval face. She was fully engaged in our conversation, relaxed, and quick to laugh. Her maternal grandparents were Czech Jews, and her paternal grandmother was Jew; her parents emigrated to Israel when her father was six years old.
Peer became interested in the game from having to go along when her mother drove her two older siblings to tennis practice in Tel Aviv. Although she thought she wanted to be a singer, her first coach encouraged her to play tennis because she had “a fire in her eyes.”
Shahar says that as a child, she was “the crazy girl” – not a tomboy, exactly, but a girl with a great taste for excitement and adventure. She wore a hat to the amusement park, hoping it would help her pass the minimum-size requirement (a crude box against a wall; if you fit inside, you were too small) for getting onto the roller coaster an the amusement park.
She didn’t especially dream of becoming a WTA pro. She admired Monica Seles, but took her career one step at a time, with plenty of hope but no benchmarks or expectations. She always liked Roland Garros best of all tournaments, and the last thing she told me, on the record, was:
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I always said I will win this tournament one day. . .
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It’s funny, but it didn’t sound like an outlandish or insolent boast.
P.S, Some of you may remember a controversial post I wrote (Sania of the Times ) based on a report in an Israeli newspaper, quoting a source who said that Sania Mirza had decided to terminate her short-lived doubles partnership with Peer because of pressure from fundamentalist Muslim groups. I had a chance to talk about this with Peer and some other primary sources, and it turns out that the claim was a distortion and over-simplification. I will append a correction to that post (it’s in the archives) and also write a separate post on this subject, with whatever explanation or apology is appropriate, on this subject after the French Open.