A first-quarter report-card post always feels premature. Going strictly by the numbers, of course, it isn’t. We’re three months into the 12 months that will constitute 2010. One of the four majors has been played. On the men’s side, one of four rounds of Davis Cup and two of the eight Masters tournaments are in the books. We’re even farther along on the women’s tour, which wraps up at the end of October.
Despite all of these results, the season has yet to take shape, to coalesce around a certain player or rivalry or dynamic or streak. We’ve seen tentative signs of future success and failure from everyone, but with no one in obvious control of either tour, the end of this year’s spring U.S. hard-court season feels a little like the end of spring training in baseball. It’s from this point on, with the busy clay season leading straight into grass, that tennis will build its momentum in 2010.
Before it gets rolling too fast to stop, let’s take a minute to assess the top players’ performances so far. Like I said, no one has been awe-inspiring, but few have been awful, either, and that’s reflected in the grades below.
Roger Federer
He did what he wanted to do: Win the Australian Open, the only tournament thus far in 2010 that the record books will recognize. And he did it with some of the smoothest and most self-assured tennis of his career. Federer said a “feeling of peace” came over him before the final of that tournament. If he can keep that feeling going at every Slam, it will be hard for his younger challengers to do much to disturb him.
After that, we saw the less-than-Olympian Federer, the one who wants to win Masters events, to stay No. 1, and, at the most basic level, to win matches because he doesn't like losing them. Have you ever tried to be less competitive than you normally are when you’re in the middle of a match, any match? I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying that it simply can’t be done.
What helps Federer maintain his edge at the Slams is the extra six games he's given to find his game, as well as the sense that he really is playing for history at those events. By now he knows exactly how to approach every situation. Maybe even more important, the majors give his opponents an extra six games to think about what they’re trying to do and lose their games—there's a lot more rope to hang yourself with in 3 out of 5. Considering that Federer hasn’t reached a final in either spring hard court Masters tournament since 2006, you can’t read anything long-term into his early losses this time around. What you can say, though, is that he didn’t play well at either of them. A-
Serena Williams
Ditto for Serena: She did what she set out to do. Even more than Federer, she plays for the big moments—by now, they’ve got to be pretty important to get her attention. Not only did she win the year’s first Slam, she did it by beating Justine Henin, the woman who had been her rival and even nemesis at these events in the past, in the match that everyone in tennis had been waiting to see. Did I mention she plays for the big moments?
It’s impossible to say what her form will be going forward, since we haven’t seen anything of that form in two months. The one surprise, at least to me, is how serious her injury must have been coming out of Melbourne. A-
Andy Roddick
What struck me most about his win in Key Biscayne was how well Roddick keeps his opponents off guard these days. He’s playing intelligently, without overthinking or making life complicated for himself. While he plays the vast majority of points from the baseline, and many of those from a defensive posture, he rarely gives the other guy the same shot to hit twice in a row. Roddick doesn’t have a reputation for variety, but even more than Andy Murray these days, he switches spins, directions, and trajectories from one shot to the next. It was hard for anyone to get in a groove against him in either Indian Wells or Key Biscayne. Even his forays to the net felt better timed.
More important for his immediate Grand Slam future, Roddick also showed he could leave his comfort zone of safe loops and chips and win points proactively, the way he did over the last two sets against Rafael Nadal. I would normally say that it’s too bad for Roddick that the clay season begins now—and it is too bad, really—but the patience and consistency he showed over the last month could help him make a few surprising inroads in Europe. A-
Venus Williams
Her year has been strong enough—two titles, a final, and a quarter in four events—that we can chalk up Sunday’s dismal loss to Kim Clijsters as one of those days. Like Serena, Justine, and Kim, Venus has exhibited few, if any, signs of a slowdown or an erosion of skill as she’s aged. It’s strange: I thought, 10 years ago, that Venus would dominate the sport for a brief period before moving on. Instead, she’s stuck around to become the consummate pro, but one who no longer has the ability, when she’s not on Centre Court, to take over in the biggest matches. A-
Justine Henin
Like Clijsters, she’s come back to full strength more quickly than anyone had a right to expect. Or maybe we should have expected it. Tennis is a meritocracy, and quality will always be quality. She hasn’t lost a step or any of her timing, either. At the same time, she has lost the three most important matches she’s played, to Serena in Melbourne, and to Kim in Brisbane and Key Biscayne. In those defeats, Henin showed that while her game hasn't gone anywhere, neither has her penchant for aggressiveness for aggressiveness' sake. In other words, she’s the same as she ever was. We'll see if she dials it back a little on clay. I'd expect that the "same old Justine," whatever her flaws, will do just fine in Paris. B+
Kim Clijsters
Thinking out loud after her semifinal win over Henin, I wondered if Clijsters’ history of strong early-match performances showed that, all nerves aside, she’s the most gifted women’s player of this era. She displayed a lot of those gifts—heavy ground strokes, point-grabbing returns, speed and court sense—in dismantling an ailing Venus two days later. Clijsters doesn’t even seem to need to do her famous splits anymore to get to wide balls.
I’ll be curious to see whether Clijsters can get out of her own way long enough to put up this kind of result at the French or Wimbledon, two majors she’s never won. Or, if things don’t go as planned, will she revert to the listless version of herself who lost early in Melbourne and Indian Wells? I’m hoping for the former. When you see Clijsters at her best, you can’t help but want to see that kind of potential realized more often. B+
Rafael Nadal
I wrote at the start of the year that Nadal would need one match, or one tournament, that will let him flip the switch on his confidence. Once he got it, he’d be as tough to beat as ever. So far this season, just when you think he’s about to have that tournament—in Doha, in Indian Wells, in Key Biscayne—he loses a lead and a match that appears to be his. The downside is that over the last year a lot more guys have had success attacking Nadal—Roddick was the latest example—and Nadal has had more trouble finding a way to counter those attacks, to come up with the one key return or pass that clinches a win. He’s playing well, at times as well as ever. But has just enough of his old aura of indomitable tenacity worn off that the next tier of players now feel they can beat him when it's tight? Or has he done enough to get his game in order so he can flip the switch once again on clay? If you believe in history, you have to go with the latter. B
Caroline Wozniacki
She’s farther along than I thought she would be at this stage—being ranked No. 2 in the world is pretty far along, after all. She’s shown that she'll likely be the steadiest from week to week of her peer group. And she came very close to advancing her career even farther when she lost 6-4 in the third to Henin last week. That may have been her most impressive result yet; Wozniacki played a Hall of Famer neck and neck. Maybe she’ll learn from the loss, and try to put more matches on her racquet, à la Justine, in the future—Henin found an extra gear with her backhand in the final game that Wozniacki didn't have. The question will be: Does Wozniacki have the weapons to do that, or will she have to wait for opponents to self-destruct if she’s going to pull out those close matches against top players? All I can say for now is that’s farther along than I thought she would be. B
Andy Murray
His win over Nadal in Melbourne was an impressive display of first-strike tennis from a guy not known for his first-strike, or second-strike, mentality. Since then, though, Murray has crawled back into his shell. Two things are worrying, one mental and one technical. He’s let his Aussie Open final loss to Federer affect him more deeply than it should affect a guy who wants to build a champion’s attitude. You wonder if the extra pressure of the British Slam curse really will keep him from ever breaking through. Just as important, in these last two tournaments, it hasn’t appeared that Murray could have found a way to turn his losses around even if he had been feeling more confident. Has the tour begun to figure him out? Roddick has, at least: With his patient variety, the American accomplished exactly what Murray did last spring—finalist in Indian Wells, champion in Key Biscayne—by doing a lot of what Murray did on the court. B-
Novak Djokovic
Playing Davis Cup seems to have hurt Djokovic exactly as much not playing it helped Roddick. The Serb came off the high of a first-round DC win in Belgrade straight into major letdowns in these last two tournaments. The guy who seemed to be built for the long haul a few years ago now has trouble finding ways to win on the days when he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. Unlike Roddick, his version of slow-court tennis didn’t work in March; he doesn’t have the serve to back it up. Still, last year he found his form over the course of the clay season. Djokovic's game and brain may bend, but so far they haven't broken. He’s still No. 2 in the world, and during Davis Cup he was unbeatable entertainment. That's always good for a little extra credit. C+