The Inner Game of Garbine

Every so often, as hard as it may be to believe, things can come a little too easily for a tennis player in a big match. You walk out prepared, you see the ball well, and suddenly you find yourself swinging with that ideal, but usually elusive, mix of freedom and forcefulness. The ball seems to find the corners by itself, and after a couple of games, you feel as if you couldn’t miss if you tried.

Does this sound like a dream, or at worst, a very good problem to have? It is, for as long as it lasts. But tennis being tennis—i.e., a never-ending psychological tightrope walk and inner tug of war—it can end up creating as much anxiety in a player as it does joy. Rather than exulting in the moment or gaining confidence from it, you’re just as likely to start wondering when it’s going to end. When is the magic going to wear off? Will I be able to play like this when it gets tight? What if I build a big lead and blow it?

Garbine Muguruza may not have asked herself exactly those questions, in exactly those words, during the first set and a half of her semifinal against Agnieszka Radwanska at Wimbledon on Thursday, but she understood the feeling. The 21-year-old Spanish woman, who had won just one match at the All England Club before this year, couldn’t have asked for a better start to her maiden Grand Slam semifinal. Through the first 12 games, everything that could go right, did go right for her.

Muguruza, a long-limbed 6-footer with a stately gait, threw down unreturnable serves; she had six aces for the match. She battered the ball with her full-cut two-handed backhand and swatted it with her rangy forehand; she finished with 39 winners to Radwanska’s 16. Unlike Radwanska’s last victim, Madison Keys, Muguruza followed her good shots forward; she was a stellar 17 of 21 at the net. And when Radwanska threw in a 75-m.p.h. second serve, Muguruza gave it what it deserved, a swift trip past her helpless opponent and into the tarp at the back of the court. It was all so simple and one-sided that you began to wonder how Radwanska had ever won a match against anyone.

Of course, Radwanska, the 2012 Wimbledon finalist, had won a match or two, and Muguruza knew it. And she knew that beating her wasn’t supposed to be this easy. Which, tennis players being tennis players, made her start to worry.

“I think I was ahead 6-1, 3-1, and I was like ‘What?’” Muguruza said with a laugh of disbelief afterward. “I was playing really good and I was like, ‘Wait, you’re the only one who can lose the match. So I get really nervous. And I think Radwanska was waiting for this moment, she was waiting to see if [I] can handle this situation.”

Muguruza misremembered the score, but she definitely remembered the moment when everything hit her. She led 6-2, 3-1, and 15-30 on Radwanska’s serve. Two points from being up a set and a double break, she had reached the moment when, if she did go on to lose the match, people would say that she blew it or choked it or gave it away. Tennis is a solitary game, but in these moments a player is truly alone. As Muguruza said, only she could lose the match now. She had essentially won the external battle with her opponent, but she still have to triumph in the (much trickier) internal battle with herself.

Not surprisingly, this is often the moment when a player’s nerves start to show—it’s choking, more than losing, that we fear—and it was true for Muguruza today. At 15-30, she went for a forehand that she had been making all afternoon; this time the ball clunked off her strings and flew well long. Radwanska held, and had new life; incredibly, she was still just one break down. This was the moment, as Muguruza had guessed, that the woman known as the Ninja had been waiting for. A more confident Radwanska began to carve up rallies with her customary angles, and in what felt like the blink of an eye, she had won five straight games and the set. If Muguruza wondered when her magical run would come to an end, she had her answer.

The second set sounds as much like a nightmare for Muguruza as the first set sounded like a dream. But there was an upside for her: The worst was over, and this semifinal had turned into a normal match again. Radwanska had made the run that everyone expected, and put her famous variety of shots and spins to good use; she had even neutralized Muguruza’s power.

Now, instead of being alone with only the finish line ahead of her, Muguruza had company in the race to that line, a fact that can be oddly comforting. Getting there wasn’t a matter of beating back her own nerves and staying in the elusive and mystical zone, as it had been in the first set. Now it was the more straightforward matter of out-competing her opponent.

“I said, ‘You’re playing against Agnieszka, come on, it’s going to be a tough match,’” Muguruza said she told herself at the start of the third set.

Re-externalizing the fight proved to be the key.

“In the end,” Muguruza said, “I could find a way to play more aggressive, lose the fear, and win the match.”

Muguruza finally fought her way past Radwanska 6-2, 3-6, 6-3. She used her serve well, and pushed forward fearlessly. This time, Radwanska, who had two break points in the final game, didn’t make it easy for Muguruza.

Maybe that’s the best thing that could have happened to her.