by Pete Bodo
So there they were again, Venus and Serena Williams, just as they were in the recent Wimbledon final, just as they have been for pretty much as many years as the two of them have known. They stood ready to play again, to pull and push and test and challenge each other the way they have throughout their inextricably intertwined lives, sometimes rising to the most unique challenge in the history of competitive sports, sometimes seeming to shrink from it, because when you're so accustomed to being two against the world, it must be spooky to turn and find yourself one against the other, snarling.
So there they were again, just as they had once stood on that sorry court in blighted Compton where they learned the game as little girls, mere stick figures sheened with perspiration, hair clipped into pink berets or done up nice in corn rows, or braids. Just as they were in years to follow on numerous, better tended and lit courts all over the globe. As if the condition of the net or the temperature of the drinks, when there were drinks, really mattered. Because by then the girls knew that courts everywhere were pretty much naked and hard, but also that they were the stepping stones over which they could escape something even more naked and hard - something they may have known little about, firsthand, because they were sheltered, but surely apprehended in way lives were lived and sometimes lives were lost all around them.
Two months ago it was a grass court in London, before that it was a hard court in Bangalore. Before that, was it Miami? Melbourne or Paris - Indian Wells or Rome? Over the years, those courts and places and venues all ran together, the sameness overpowering the differences, but one thing often did not feel right, ran against the grain of familiarity and put them on territory foreign to two young women who had stood together and overcome odds and hazards theoretically more daunting to each of them than the mere prospect of having to play. . . the single person with whom they had played most often.
Well, all that's history now. Because there they were again, the arc lights above Arthur Ashe stadium casting their weird quadruple shadows, as if each of them were a fighting star with a painted center: Venus in an elegant black dress over a pair of shocking pink panties, coquettish as a wink. And Serena, in a dress the color of raspberry sherbet. And soon after the match began, it was clear that they were both feeling frisky and zesty, eager to take full measure of each others' games. Something has come full circle in these girls; it seemed the case at Wimbledon, and it was underscored here. They were back where they were again, in a Four Quartets kind of way; two girls ready to pull and push and test and challenge each other.
The match they played differed from the Wimbledon final in a few critical ways: for one thing, the hard court of Arthur Ashe enabled them to play longer and more riveting points than had the turf of Wimbledon. This would have suggested an advantage for Venus, whose lean frame, reach, and endless legs seemed greater assets on the surface than Serena's explosive power, or her precise shotmaking abilities. In fact, it was an **advantage for Venus, although she failed to exploit it properly.
At Wimbledon, Venus won 7-5,6-4, in large part because of the way her serve and hard, skidding shots took away Serena's time. Here, the higher bounce gives a shotmaker more room to operate. This was something Venus understood, as evidenced by the way she stood two, sometimes three feet inside the baseline, even though the difference in their average serve speed (106 for Venus, 102 for Serena) hardly called for so drastic a measure.
Serena wisely resisted copying her older sister in this department; she stood a few feet behind the baseline, playing left field - presumably, because she trusted her ability to throw the runner out at the plate. A comparison of their two most recent matches is as good - and graphic - a way as any to understand the difference between grass and hard courts.
In the first set, Venus wasted a break and Serena caught fire in the tiebreaker. A costly forehand error at 6-4 extinguished one set point, and a Serena ace to the wide side (107 MPH) took care of the other. Serena nailed a backhand volley to earn her own set point, and she converted when Venus missed a go-for-broke inside-out forehand attempt.
In the second set, three games, not in sequence, told a lot. Venus played an overpowering game to go up a break, 4-2. She then fell behind, 15-40, but pulled the game out thanks largely to a service winner to the forehand and a smoking, 121 MPH ace right down the gut. One game later, though, Serena struck. Venus tagged an ace to go up 40-love - triple set point. And that's when Serena caught fire - and Venus's hand trembled. Serena swept the next five points to break the best server in the women's game.
