MELBOURNE—“Yeah, I know, Serena lost the first set to Makarova, I saw that. She was down in the second, too. You know this is how she does it. She’s not moving well, she’s shanking everything in sight, she’s about to bust her racquet, and a week later she wins the tournament and everyone says, ‘I’ll never doubt Serena again, she can do anything, win a Slam blindfolded.’
"What’s that? Did I see the last game? I watched for a while, Makarova was hanging pretty tough up 5-3, I’ll bet she thought she had a chance to win. I didn't see the end, though. When Serena aced on her on match point, I started playing around with this new app for my phone. This thing can translate seagull cries into English. Pretty obvious what was coming next for Makarova, right? Sort of feel sorry for her, what did she think was going to happen . . . Wait, what? Makarova won? Serena missed on match point?”
I’m guessing that you, like me, were waiting patiently but confidently for Serena Williams to make her inevitable hair-raising comeback today against Ekaterina Makarova in the fourth round at the Australian Open. More than any pro since Bjorn Borg, the phrase, “you can never count her out” applies to Serena. She knows it, too. How many other players would wait until they were down 2-6, 3-5, 0-15 to pump her first for one of the only times in the match?
When Serena’s final backhand floated harmlessly wide, and Makarova had her well-deserved 6-2, 6-3 win, though, I realized that I was waiting for a different—younger, less-ill, less-injured—Serena from the one we’ve seen for the last year and a half. This loss reminded me that, despite all of the back-from-the-brink Grand Slam wins that Williams has entertained us with over the years, we haven’t seen one in a while. The last time she pulled one out and went on to win a major was at Wimbledon in 2009, when she saved match point against Elena Dementieva in the semifinals.
I waited for something similar to happen at Wimbledon last year against Marion Bartoli; it didn’t happen. I waited when she played Sam Stosur at the U.S. Open; again, Williams couldn’t hold at the end and force Stosur to serve it out. And I really waited for it to happen against the 23-year-old, 56th-ranked Makarova, a player with nothing like the talent or career record of Bartoli or Stosur. No dice once more. Again Serena couldn’t hold and make Makarova earn it on her own serve.
What made it even stranger, or “worse,” if you’re a Serena fan, is how passive she was at the end. The rifled winners, the famous fist-pumps: None of it was there. Serena played safely, of all things, in the last game, content, it seemed to wait for an error from Makarova. Even when Williams connected with a big serve in that game, she was caught flat-footed by Makarova’s return. Otherwise, she guided her ground strokes, right over the baseline and past the sideline. I hadn't seen that before.
Williams was frustrated but not despondent afterward. By the time she walked into the press room, she knew how many unforced errors she had made. Asked for her thoughts on the match, she said, “I think she played really well. She went for broke on a lot of her shots. I made 37 errors. That kind of tells the story of the match."
Serena went on to say that she served “horrendous,” and that her “lefty serve was better than that.” It’s true, Serena’s lowest moment came at 2-2 in the second, when she double faulted badly at break point and cried, “Oh my God.”
Of course, Williams wasn’t 100 percent. She moved poorly, and it didn’t appear that she was confident pushing off on her ankle for her serve. When she was asked if she would have played this event if it hadn't been a major, she didn't hesitate: "No way," she said.