“A game of inches.”
“One point here or there.”
“Sometimes in tennis it’s one ball that can change everything.”
The latter statement was made by Caroline Wozniacki in her press conference today. She knows better than anyone at the moment that one shot, one inch, one ball, can spell the difference between winning and losing, between making a Grand Slam final and shutting the doubters up for a day, and having to wait five months to try again.
The thing is, a few inches can even spell the difference between a stirring, improbable comeback and a garden-variety straight-setter, one that never seems in doubt. In the end, we got one of each in Rod Laver Arena on Thursday. But in truth, the two women’s semifinals reached virtually identical moments late in their second sets. It may not seem like it now that we know the final scores, but both matches were in equal doubt at the same stage. Together they illustrate how suddenly, and seemingly randomly, a tennis match can be decided, how the placement of a single shot on either side of a sideline can send everything careening off in a completely different direction.
Wozniacki served for the match at 5-4 in the first semi against Li Na. Wozniacki had exploited a nervous opponent to that point, masterfully controlling the rallies, redirecting Li's power, and looking totally comfortable both defending and moving forward to put balls away. It looked like No. 1 was living up to her billing at last. At match point, though, Li, with nothing left to lose, took a rip at a forehand. Wozniacki got a racquet on it but couldn’t bring the ball back in the court. It was deuce. The shot seemed to set Na free. She won a long rally on the next point, and an hour or so later she had come all the way back to win the match. When it was over, we were shaking our heads as we walked out of the stadium: “What a great match! What a great comeback!” If Li had missed that go-for-broke forehand when she was down match point, we would said her nerves would always get the best of her, and that Wozniacki really does have what it takes.
In the second semi, Kim Clijsters was in the Wozniacki role. She won the first set routinely over Vera Zvonareva and was cruising in the second, up a break at 4-3. The sun was going down in Laver and the crowd was mellow to the point of inattention. The Russian simply hadn’t had it all afternoon; she didn’t seem to know what she wanted to do out there, whether to attack or push or both or neither.
Then Clijsters went down 0-30. Still not much of an audience reaction. Then she went down 15-40. Finally, a few people were roused to oooh and aaah. Was this one going to go the same dramatic way as the first? Nobody seemed too convinced. But when Wozniacki had served for the first match, very few people watching would have believed that it was possible for Li to make any kind of comeback. She seemed as out of it as Zvonareva did here.
At 30-40, Zvonareva and Clijsters rallied. For most of the match, Clijsters had been the bigger hitter, by an average of 10 kilometers per hour. But she was tentative in this game. Zvonareva got a look at a backhand. It was a similar shot to the one Li had made at match point down. But Zvonareva’s backhand slid a few inches wide. Clijsters pumped her fist and played a confident game to hold. She broke Zvonareva with ease in the next game to end the match.
So is tennis just a matter of a point here or there? Is it, at certain moments, just blind luck? It might seem like it on the surface, but there was a bigger difference between these two matches than just one shot. In the end a cardinal tenet of Grand Slam tennis held true. Barely, but it held true. It’s the rule of thumb that says you must take a major title, not wait for it to be given to you.
For most of the first two sets, Wozniacki had walked the line between taking and waiting. She had allowed to Li to self-destruct even as she grabbed her opportunities to go for winners when they came. She used her sliding slice serve in the ad court to throw off her opponent’s forehand, and she changed directions enough to keep Li from getting into any kind of groove—Wozniacki rarely let her opponent hit the same two shots in a row. If she was backed up, she lofted a moonball to get herself out of trouble, and more than once she drew an error after a long rally by throwing in a nice surprise slice two-handed backhand, an unorthodox and deceptive shot that she hits well.
Serving it out, though, Wozniacki pulled back just a bit, went back into a safe shell. She put the ball, and the onus, on Li’s racquet and waited for her to miss. If Li had missed one more ball, we would have said that Wozniacki’s strategy was brilliantly practical and cagey, just right for the moment, a case of doing only what you have to do to win. But Li didn’t miss. The player who controlled the rallies eventually won.
Wozniacki has been a wacky and weird presence here the last two weeks. She held her own presser, concocted an elaborate fiction about being scratched by a kangaroo, and then appeared in boxing gloves with a plastic kangaroo. She was a good sport. She also engineered her own improbable comeback against Francesca Schiavone, in which she won by coming out her shell at just the right time. But that’s a much easier thing to do when you’re behind than when you’re serving for a place in your first Grand Slam final.
Today Wozniacki was glum when she got to the pressroom. She rested her chin on her palm and summed up her day in a sentence: “Well, I had a match point and I didn’t take it.”
There's that word again: “take.” Maybe Wozniacki will keep it in mind in the future. She put herself one point from a Slam final, but it’s a point she’s going to have to win, and preferably to grab, next time.
Instead, it was Li who grabbed it, and the day belonged to her. She’ll finally bring that fabulous full-blooded backhand to a big stage. She didn’t conquer her nerves in this match so much as hit her way around them.
Li, a born comedian, was even better in the post-match interview on court. She said her husband had woken her up every hour last night with his snoring, and that it was the thought of the “prize money” that kept her going through the third set. Then she forgot that it was—or may have been, no one’s quite sure—her anniversary.
Now she’ll get Kim Clijsters in the final. There’s a lot of talk here about what a win by her would do for Chinese tennis, with some people even speculating that it could mean the Australian Open moving there someday. For the moment, I’m looking forward to a heavy-hitting match-up of two-handed shot-makers. Each of them stepped forward and grabbed their semifinal today. It should be fun to see them take it to each other on Saturday.