The Revivalist

Victoria Azarenka is a former world No. 1 and two-time Grand Slam champion. She had spent the first hour of her third-round match playing what may have been the best tennis of her season; maybe even of her last two seasons. She controlled the rallies and stalked across Court Philippe Chatrier with confidence. Yet when Azarenka went up a set and 3-1 in the second, all I could think was: When is it going to get away from her?

That had less to do with Vika than it did with the woman on the other side of the net, Serena Williams. Up until that point, the top seed had been as erratic as Azarenka had been steady. Serena had been the one scrambling behind the baseline, the one who was having her second serve handled, the one who was pressing and missing from the ground, the one who couldn’t buy a return when she needed one.

Yet Serena hadn’t been completely out of it, the way she was in her three-set win in the last round. On Saturday, Serena’s grunt had grown steadily louder—on one backhand, she seemed to make it echo—as she searched for the blazing winner that would change the atmosphere in the stadium, stop Azarenka’s momentum cold, and let everyone know that, yes, this was Serena Williams playing.

After a few failed attempts and a few F-bombs dropped in frustration, Williams had her shot. It’s wasn’t a winner, but it was just as effective and just as extraordinary—few other players could have hit it. Serving at 1-3, 30-30, two points from going down a double break, she watched as Azarenka, who was deep in the zone at that moment, drilled a backhand hard and close to the baseline. On other days and other points, Serena wouldn’t have reached the ball, but this time she had to have it. With one of her loudest grunts of the match, she reached out stabbed a forehand back. Azarenka moved forward and ... missed a very makable forehand wide.

The chance for the double break was gone, Serena was still in the match, and we were all reminded why “make your opponent play an extra ball” is one of the biggest—and most useful—clichés in tennis. Serena had given Azarenka, who was 3-15 against her coming into this match, another chance to get tight, another chance not to believe.

Two games later, Serena was off to the races. Down 2-4, she played her first top-level game of the afternoon to break. Again she was helped along by an Azarenka forehand error, at 15-30—this one, much like one she missed at a crucial juncture in their 2012 U.S. Open final, went into the tape. But aside from that, there wasn’t much that Vika could have done. Serena hit a backhand crosscourt winner, and followed it with a nicely angled forehand crosscourt—you could see her digging in and getting lower for each ball. When she hit two more backhand winners to go up 0-40 on Azarenka’s serve at 4-5, the set seemed to be all but hers. It was, but not in the way anyone expected it to be.

Rather than caving, Azarenka showed her own resilient side by getting the score back to deuce. Then she hit her third regrettable shot of the set, a backhand drop from the doubles alley that dropped way too soon—as John McEnroe pointed out in the commentator’s booth, that’s probably not a shot that she practices often, or ever, from that location.

On Serena’s fourth set point, Azarenka hit a forehand that caught the back of the baseline, but was called out a millisecond after Serena put her own forehand into the net. Chair umpire Kader Nouni overruled the call, but wouldn’t give Azarenka the point. Instead, it was replayed, Serena hit a forehand winner for the set, and a livid Azarenka received a warning for a “visible obscenity.”

Should Azarenka have been given the point? Yes: Replays showed that Serena had already completed her swing by the time the out call came—she might have been waiting for the call as she swung. The default call in this situation, which has come up much more often in the Hawk-Eye era, is to go with a let. It can be difficult for an umpire to be sure, in real time, which came first, the swing or the call. What’s clear on replay is rarely as clear while it’s happening.

But should a let be the default call? It has seemed to me that over the last year or so, as umpires have grown used to Hawk-Eye and to making these types of calls, more of them are awarding points outright to players. That should be encouraged. But as Hawk-Eye itself has shown us, the only way to solve the problem is to look at, and listen to, a replay. Everyone watching and listening on TV knew from the replay that the call had come late, but Nouni had to make the decision without seeing or hearing it. (In theory, replay of these moments shouldn’t slow matches down significantly.)

While it was an unfortunate call for Azarenka, Serena was simply better over the last two sets. She played with controlled aggression and, in vintage Serena style, stretched her lead as the third set progressed. She won the last six games of the match, and finished, also in vintage Serena style, with a forehand winner and a victory twirl.

"Even though I lost the first set," Williams said, "I told myself, 'Well, at least you're playing better than in your second-round match.' ... It was definitely better today. It's definitely a step in the right direction."

"I just really want to be here," Serena said. Those may be the last words that the rest of the surviving French women's field wants to hear from her.

Azarenka was close to tears in her press conference, as she lashed out at Nouni's call and lamented her bad draws this season. She’s 3-16 against Serena now, and she lost her second heartbreaker of the spring to her. But she's right there with Serena, and, as she said later, she can still learn from her.

"She really stepped it up," Azarenka said. "She went for a lot of shots that landed right on the line, and she really just stayed aggressive. Looking back, I've got to learn from that and maybe stay a bit more aggressive...but there wasn't much wrong I could have done, I don't think."

It was bracing to see Serena, after struggling on clay this spring, put together two excellent sets of play. The match as a whole reminded me of a few of her early wins at this year’s Australian Open—slow start, fast finish. As the French Open began, I wondered whether a third-round match with Azarenka might be exactly what she needed to clear the clay cobwebs and set her up for another of her customary second-week Slam clampdowns. It wouldn’t be a surprise. Nothing Serena Williams does ever is.