Say Cheese

Leave it to Svetlana Kuznetsova to reach into the bottomless bag of animal similes and come up comparing herself to. . . a mouse. Yesterday, after Serena Williams snatched a semifinal match away from her here at the Sony Ericsson Open, Kuzzie groped for the analogy that best described the events of the day and came up with this:

"Yeah, I think this game I had so many chances.  It was amazing.  Every time I felt like I had it, but I could not take it, you know?" She paused and raised her right arm, pretending to hold some imaginary object aloft, and concluded, "Like you have cheese here. . . and you cannot just eat it."

Still, how often does the mouse get to scale the counter and actually get to hold that indescribably savory and aromatic wad of Limburger in its tiny trembling paws - and with the rolling on its back on the sunny spot on the floor no less?

Not very.

So Kuznetsova was surprisingly upbeat about the way Williams suddenly rolled over onto her belly and sprang up on the counter to take the cheese for herself. Mice do best when they're reconciled to their place in the food chain; they also know they can grow pretty fat and sassy feasting on breadcrumbs instead of Limburger.

Describing a match between 'Rena and Sveta as a grand drama on the order of, oh, an episode of Tom and Jerry (shall we say the incomparable Puss Gets the Boot?) isn't just an exercise in mere whimsy. Kuznetsova is built on a mouse platform, with a thick body and no appreciable waist, as well as strong legs that she puts to good use scurrying energetically around the court. 'Rena has a seemingly enormous advantage in her long limbs and the lax, limber muscles that enable her to pounce in surprise. Watching her, you often get the feeling that she's not all that interested in running; her specialty is the short burst and the kinetic explosion.

True to the mouse spirit, Kuzzie is a worker; if  you've ever spent time in the country and heard mice racing along the rafters on cold, still night, you know what I mean. And at the start of the match, Sveta was all industry. She's fleet but not at all leggy; she just churns along, and then puts her remarkable eye-hand co-ordination to work in an effort to probe and open up the court with a slice here, a flat drive there, a topspin lob somewhere else. It worked perfectly in the early going, because Williams looked sluggish and out of sorts. You know trouble is afoot when the you can hear the murmuring of the crowd and know they're asking: What's wrong with Serena?

Kuznetsova won the first set, 6-3, and, as this was my first live view of the "new" Serena, I was baffled. I could see that she was fit - perhaps the fittest she's been since her best years on tour. But when Serena isn't moving well (or showing no inclination to move, well or badly), it's hard to envision her at her best and most feline. That may just be because a little bit of moving carries Serena a long way - in this case, a long way being just that extra second or 18 inches she needed to position herself to crack those heavy, bold groundstrokes in a way that might enable her to turn the tables.

Williams seemed in big trouble when she fell behind, 15-40, in the first game of the second set, but she saved the game. Soon she began to find her groove and the set was blissfully free of service breaks (the point of the game is to hold serve, right?) until Kuzzie crumbled in the 12th game.

Part of Kuznetsova's game plan was to play from further inside the court than usual, and for a while it worked.But as Williams applied steady pressure, driving Kuznetsova back with penetrating service returns and precise placements, Kuznetsova's best shots began to seem less like forceful statements than attempts to remain in the conversation. And we all know how hard it is to say something interesting when you feel pressured to do so. The greater the silence, the more daunting a task it is to fill it with something notable. And the silence when you're serving at 5-6 against a dangerous, go-for-broke returner like Williams is pretty profound.

On balance, though, this was not an unusual position for Kuznetsova; relying on her inventiveness may be her ultimate comfort zone. For all of her assets and skills, Kuznetsova is basically a reactive player. In the endless game of cat and mouse, she's always the mouse.

Every player goes into a match with a game plan. But some players are far better than others at implementing and even adjusting that plan during the flow of play. Kuznetsova is an oddity; she often hits a great shot and you sense that she, like you, is wondering; So what's going to happen next?  This occurs at a very subtle level - after all, you don't get to be no. 3 in the world standing around watching your shots like some high school kid. And while it's undeniably a good thing for a tennis player to, as they say, "be in the moment", but there is also too much of a good thing. It amounts to the sense that instead of building points with a inter-connected series shots, she's taking it one stroke at a time.

I think of this as Aranxta Sanchez-Vicario disease. All counter-punchers are susceptible to it, no matter how flashy or well-rounded.I don't know if there's a cure for this essential stop-start feature in Kuznetsova's game. In some matches, it's probably an asset, because it certainly opens frontiers of surprise and all manner of options against someone who enjoys playing set pieces. But you just can't survive rallies and counter punch your way to success, taking all your cues from an opponent - not against a player of Williams's caliber. She has too much power, too much range, and she's willing to take charge if you won't - physically as well as psychologically.

This was a good day for Kuznetsova (if only you could score a tennis match on a curve in which all points are equally meaningful!), and a perfect portrait of an original game in all its idiosyncrasy. She broke Williams in the first game of the third set, but was broken right back. Ditto the next two games. The women remained on serve for the next three games, until Williams got the killing break for 6-5. That game was well-played game by both women, and while it was great to see Kuzzie playing keep-up instead of catch -up (she hit two forehands with such uncanny timing and force that both her feet ended up a good two feet off the ground), Serena closed her out, then served it out.

In her presser, Kuznetsova rued her inability to take control of the match: "When I was on the top, I was playing too careful.  When she was on top, I was playing better, you know. I couldn't find the right balance there. I think that was my main mistake for the match. . . I would like to see next time me be a bit more aggressive and play better when I'm on the top."

Serena was opaque in her own meeting with the media. But like the Cheshire cat, her smile spoke volumes.