The Longest Day

Today is for the grinders among the press pariahs: the women come flying out of the box at 11 AM, rockin' the quarterfinals, and the shootin' match doesn't end until the second night match, featuring Andy Roddick vs. Roger Federer. I am staying, although I may not write the night results until tomorrow.

I have to admit I couldn't bring myself to get fired up about Shahar Peer's prospects against Anna Chakvetadze this morning, so I wandered out with two of the TW Literary All-Stars, Asad Raza and Andrew Friedman, to watch the Jimmy Arias vs. Todd Martin match on Court 7. They were playing in the Legends draw. I get a kick out of the Arthurian vibe in that, and there's no doubt that Todd Martin's hair is as gray as a steel breastplate or casque.

Asad (aka Ray Stonada) is writing a piece on Arias; Andrew is doing a story on Court 7 (both, alas, for Tennis, the magazine). Asad and Arias are both from Buffalo - what more do you need for an angle? So far, Asad has had the funniest line of the tournament, although it had nothing to do with tennis and everything to do with Buffalo. He said he once told a high-school friend that if they made a pill that put you to sleep after the final gun of an NFL Buffalo Bills game, but woke you up 10 minutes before the kickoff of the next game, he'd take it. I love that line.

Anyway, Arias is impish and, well, small as ever; he was over-matched against Todd, who has been tearing it up on the senior circuit these days. It was clear from the start that this was going to be a mercy killing, and Arias (the victim) was cool with that and so was Martin (the executioner). Todd took a little off his stinging groundies and a lot off his serve, and that assured us that we would get to see Jimmy smack some of those scary forehands and one-handed backhands that once propelled him to No. 4 in the world despite his diminutive size.

Arias hits his forehand so savagely that it looks like he's actually throwing the racquet at the ball, and he takes such a big cut at the backhand that halfway through his follow-through it looks like he's just been shot. Henin is the same way, but I'll get to her (and Serena Williams) a little later.

Arias won the second point when Martin mishandled a limp, blooper of a service return and drilled it out, leading Arias to address the well-stocked bleachers: "Yeah, he hates that high, slow one!" At various times, Arias or Martin would glance over, puzzled over what we were doing there, three press guys watching a match in the Legends (a-hem) event. You know, it was good crack, the crowd loved every minute of it, and there was never any danger of a match interrupting the festivities. Jimmy had won one game when I wandered way after the first set.

This was an nice change of pace from the tension percolating during last night's match between Justine Henin and Serena Williams, which I admit to watching from home. What the hail, it was Cowboy Luke's first day of kindergarten, and I wanted to make sure had didn't get kicked out or anything (I'm wondering if that kind of thing is genetic). I had two inter-related thoughts about that encounter.

Henin showed last night that she isn't afraid of Rena or her game, which is a critical Step One in weathering the storm that Williams can conjure up with just a few passes of the racquet. It also enabled Justine to hang tough in late stages of the first set and the tiebreaker; if this were a strategy in the formal sense, you could have called it "rope-a-dope", but I'm pretty sure it was unplanned, and thus more like Henin was thinking: Dear God, please let me survive - Ouch! that really, really stings! -  this pounding long enough to find my game and somehow win this set.

I've frequently called Rena a "natural force" and yesterday it was again true: like a hurricane, she quickly built up to Category 5, but like some  hurricanes she just as quickly blew herself out. That second set was pathetic, and that leads me to point 2.

After the Australian Open and the Sony-Ericsson Open final, it seemed like Rena really could step into the arena any time she chose to start taking names and kicking booty. But subsequent events suggest that this was a serious misjudgment and over-estimation of Williams. For in the second set, Rena was a player in disarray, unable to call upon the very things that Henin used to wrap up the win: great discipline, patience and focus, all of which are virtues that must be cultivated, rather than innate gifts.

A less fancy way to put this is: Serena was ill-prepared to actually fight her way to a win in any way more significant than demonstrating her ability to shriek, pump her fist, or glare at whomever. She was impersonating a tennis player out there, and she can't get away with that against Justine; the Sister of No Mercy is only going to lose to the real thing (which may turn out to be Venus Williams).

That Justine is the ultimate model of the ascetic, disciplined, utterly dedicated tennis pro means that the justice that was served last night was of the poetic as well as the athletic kind. You know what I'd really love to see? A Henin lovers' fan club, in which the constituents adopted a uniform (kind of like the J-Bloc's baby blue t-shirts and headbands). Only for Justine, the garb ought to be a plain frock made from sackcloth. The women would eschew make-up, and iron their hair or otherwise try to make it look wispy, limp and gray-brown. And it would help not to have a suntan.

Ever wonder how Justine gets through an entire Spring and Summer of tennis without getting a tan?  Therein lies the secret of the girl who is giving self-denial a good name - and playing well enough to expose Serena Williams as the impersonator of a former self.