A small group of U.S. writers, including TENNIS Magazine contributors L. Jon Wertheim, Sandy Harwitt, Chris Clarey and Doug Robson, got to sit around for 20 minutes with Serena Williams after she won the title. She was dressed in a short, L’il Abner blue denim dress that left her arms and shoulders bare. We’re talking Marilyn Monroe here, not Halle Berry or Kate Moss. She was munching a “drumstick” ice cream cone as she spoke, and she made some surprisingly frank revelations, starting with the fact that she hates to practice. “It makes me feel like Bill Murray,” she said, referring to the star of the movie "Groundhog Day," in which he keeps waking up and reliving the same day.
Serena got a respite from that kind of drudgery in December, while taping the televison show All of Us; the shooting schedule was so exhausting that she had to forgo a whole week of practice. Steffi Graf would have had a nervous breakdown if forced to endure a comparable layoff.
Serena also confessed that, in the past, she did nothing to correct the misconception that she actually went to a gym to work on her fitness. “If I did go, with a trainer, I’d walk around, maybe pick up a couple of the weights, but that was about it.” Oh well, so much for all that Hoo-ray Harry fitness stuff spouted by the likes of Andre Agassi and Justine Henin-Hardenne.
Serena isn’t arrogant about the extent to which she relies on her talent to win matches; it’s just that, with her degree of confidence, she’s blind to the dangers of living on borrowed time, as she did here in Melbourne. She had to come back from match-point down against Sharapova, and she let Davenport build a nearly insurmountable lead in the final.
That she survived those matches speaks volumes about her capacity to play her best at the times when she most needs to–it’s a true champion’s gift. But while most top players have a flair for the dramatic, they don’t like to have it kick in any more than is absolutely necessary.
In that regard, Serena is unique.
When I asked her speculate on the greatest impediment to winding up with 10, 12 majors, she looked at me point-blank and said, “To keep it real with you, the answer is dedication.”
Let’s take that one step further. The biggest threat to Serena may be injury born of neglect. She plays hard, awfully hard. She’s a fighter; to beat her, you have to knock her out. That means that if she doesn’t invest in training and fitness, she may go broke on court. She knows it, too; she admitted that a lack of practice has been a factor in previous injuries. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I think that deep down, Serena loves and needs tennis. Without it, she’d be a cat on a hot tin roof.
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Title **Okay, I’m going to be up front here. I’ve been pretty hard on the Williams sisters this past week; I can see why Serena’s fans might think I owe her an apology of some sort following her win over Lindsay Davenport in the women’s final.
But I can’t bring myself to do it, although I’m glad to congratulate her on winning the seventh major of her career.
I’ve seen some pretty awful tennis matches in 25-odd years, including Grand Slam finals (Chris Evert vs. Natasha Zvereva, French Open of 1988, anyone?). The one I just watched ranks right up there with best of the worst of them. As you probably saw, it went like this: Lindsay rolls to first set win, 6-2. Lindsay has six break points before Serena claws out the 2-2 game of set two to barely stay alive. Lindsay races to a 40-0 lead at 3-3. Lindsay collapses, loses the game, and never wins another–the next thing you know, she’s the warm-up act in the trophy presentation, thanking sponsors and ball kids left and right.
The collapse was riveting in the same way as a video I once watched of Philadelphia’s Veteran’s Stadium imploding after it was blown up (It was even better with the sound off, but they couldn’t do that in Rod Laver Arena). And it wasn’t like Lindsay could pause at 3-3, 40-love, and, asking herself the immortal question about what it all means, grow disconsolate at failing to come up with a good answer. This would have been her first major in five years and delayed validation of her year-end No. 1 ranking for 2004. In other words, it would have been her version of Pete Sampras’s 2002 U.S. Open moment. Fittingly, the first question reporters asked her was, “Could you explain what happened?”
Lindsay took a stab at it, talking about how Serena raised her game and began to pick up Lindsay’s serve. She gave Serena credit for being a “great frontrunner.” In the end, though, there was no good explanation. Somebody just hit the plunger on the demolition harness 20 minutes too soon and it all started to come down.