ESTORIL, Portugal—It was T. S. Eliot who called April the cruelest month. He wasn’t thinking of the Estoril Open, but he might as well have been. After days of drizzle that kept players off the practice courts and nights punctuated by torrential downpour—and bars in Lisbon are the approximate size of postage stamps, relying on their clientele mingling and drinking in the street—a palpable despair attended the grey clouds that deepened this morning above Jamor, the Portuguese suburb which houses the Centro Nacional Desportivo and the Estoril Open. Still, although the steady mizzle of the morning seemed more like water torture than anything as brisk and cleansing as a shower, the weather proved as schizophrenic as spring should be. The first-round qualifying encounter between seventh seed Heather Watson, the British teenager rising rapidly in the rankings, and talented veteran Karolina Sprem began in gloom and ended in gleeful sunshine.
I was keen to see Watson play in person. Her U.S. Open Girls’ singles victory in 2009 was big news in British tennis, and the catalyst for her decision to turn professional rather than going the university route. At the age of 18, she’s ranked a very respectable 125 in the world and has two quarterfinal appearances to her name already this year (Auckland and Monterrey). A quick glance at her official website however reveals that it’s not just the weather that seems caught in two minds. The homepage banner proclaims Watson to be Young. Vibrant. Vivacious.—before adding the seemingly hasty qualifier But hard on the court. It’s typical of the wildly contradictory expectations that most people seem to have of women who play professional tennis—demanding bubbly, breathless starlets and ingénues on the one hand; gritty competitors with nerves of steel and muscles to match on the other. It’s merely one of the factors that makes life on the WTA such a feat of endurance, and Watson’s opponent Karolina Sprem has the air of someone who has already run a marathon just to be here.
A former Top 20 player and Wimbledon quarterfinalist, the 26-year-old Croat’s recent activity reads like a litany of woe: wrist injuries, elbow surgeries, breathing difficulties. She hasn’t played since losing in the first round of the Australian Open, withdrawing from Monterrey and skipping March due to an unspecified head injury. She’s wearing a random assortment of garments—leggings, a dress, a long-sleeved top all in different colors—and her face is reminiscent at times of both Flavia Pennetta and Jelena Dokic.
Watson is the seventh seed here, neatly kitted out in sleek black K-Swiss, compact and muscular without a hair out of place (although she has dyed it red). But it’s Sprem who dominates the match almost from the beginning, breaking Watson in her second service game and racing to a double-break lead. She was out hitting serves and returns for what seemed like hours in the chilly afternoon yesterday while Watson hit on an inside court with a friend, and it paid off. She hammers her flat slap of a forehand down the court over and over again, getting so low to the ground that her knees are almost grazing the clay. Watson makes the mistake of attempting to go punch for punch with her, trading pace for pace and invariably coming off worse. It’s not a clever choice of tactics on a grey, windy day with the air full of moisture and an opponent who’s playing out of her mind. In fact, it’s a young way to play. Folly might not be the sole province of the young, but it’s a lot more excusable in their case than for their more experienced counterparts.
Everything is going against Watson, and as the drizzle thickens to the point where the ink in which Sprem’s coach (the weatherbeaten Richardo Sanchez of JJ fame) is scribbling notes bleeds over the page, Sprem takes the first set 6-1 after an unlucky net cord drops stone dead over the net. Watson puffs out her cheeks with a look that says it’s not my day and there’s nothing I can do about it. A driving rain sets in that sends a smattering of spectators scrambling for umbrellas, and Watson drops serve again at the beginning of the second set. Sprem is playing well within herself and although Watson digs in her heels and gets back on serve, the writing looks to be on the wall. Luckily for Watson, however, it’s washed away by the intensifying rain and play is suspended.
At home, it’s March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers; in Jamor, you have all three together. And you have the smell after rain, beloved by gardeners and tennis fans. Just like that, it’s hot and the cobbled pathways are shining and the clay is rich and ruddy instead of a flat orange. When the women retake the court after perhaps an hour away, Watson looks a different player. Stripped of her long-sleeved top in favor of a red vest that gives her kit the coloring of a gleaming, poisonous beetle, she immediately changes tactics, putting as much height on the ball as she can as often as she can to get it out of the waist-height strike zone, where Sprem can crack it for a winner. These high balls draw unforced errors and also fearsome smashes when Sprem can get underneath them, but Watson sticks to her tactics and is rewarded with the break. With the Croat suddenly unsure and pressing too hard, you can almost feel the momentum flowing down the other end of the court; now it’s Watson who’s getting down low to the ball and making outrageous gets. An undemonstrative player, a perfect backhand lob gets a small fist pump; when a shot gets away from her, she gives a high-pitched gasp of dismay as if she has just dropped something breakable. She’s smartly taken the pace off her serve too, focusing on placement; it’s not the biggest serve, but like the rest of her game it’s smooth, compact and fluid. At the risk of sounding like a reality TV judge, she’s a wonderfully together player.
Sprem, however, is coming apart at the seams. Struggling in every area of her game—at one point she catches three consecutive ball tosses before serving a fault—she calls the trainer at 0-3 down. The trainer is barely on court before Sprem is crossing past the umpire’s chair to shake hands with her opponent and apologize for being forced to retire. It’s Watson’s first WTA win on the red clay of Europe, and her first victory to come through retirement. Quite a day for the Guernsey girl.
Like something cold-blooded, Watson was a different player in the sun, but there’s nothing cold about her when we speak after the match. Like her mother, who she credits with the advice to put more height on the ball, she has a soft, high voice—like Owen Meany without the volume—that’s at odds with her directness. “I started off a bit slow in the rain in the beginning, it was grey and really wet and Karolina was just hitting winners and really winning the points, I couldn’t do much. And then we came back and it was a lot hotter and sunnier and I thought ‘yeah, I’ve been training in this, I know what to do.’” It’s not merely on the tennis court that she knows tactics, either; when I ask her about Sprem’s retirement, she tacitly declines to discuss it, telling me instead that it’s the first time an opponent has retired against her.
In general, she’s as refreshing as a shower, laughing frequently, happy to talk about Sprem’s strengths (she describes the Croat as an “amazing player”) and open; when I ask if having to practice inside yesterday affected her adversely today, she answers matter-of-factly, “No, because with me, if I just hit balls I’ll be good. I’m not one of those that has to hit on the surface, I just have to get the feel and get the timing.” She describes her tennis in the same way that she plays it; simply, naturally, and brimming with confidence. As if there’s nothing she’d rather be doing. There’s a long road ahead of her before she can fulfill her potential as a player, but it’s all sunshine for Heather Watson today.