I tried not to make a prediction for the women’s final, but the little I did say about the match proved to be wrong anyway. First, I warned that if you’re looking for great tennis, you should look elsewhere. I hope you tuned in anyway, because there was some great, great tennis; it’s just that it was played by only one person. Second, I said it might be the sport’s version of World War III—Hiroshima II was more like it.
This may have been the strangest, most backwards, Grand Slam win in history. Leave it to Serena, the tennis champion who doesn’t look or act or play like any other tennis champion, to struggle mightily through the early rounds of the event, then go out and beat the No. 1 player in the world like it was a routine first-rounder. Militant fans of Roger Federer and aesthetes devoted to the well-rounded stylings of Justine Henin may not have been impressed by Serena’s straight back, straight ahead approach last night—she’ll never play pretty tennis—but her 6-1, 6-2 win over Maria Sharapova had a vicious beauty of its own.
We should have known Serena would come out firing forehands and throwing her death stare at her blonde opponent. Serena has lost just two Slam finals. The first was to her sister Venus at the U.S. Open in 2001. The next year little sis came out and blitzed Venus in a winner-filled blowout reminiscent of what happened last night. Her other Slam-final loss, of course, came at the hands of Sharapova at Wimbledon. While that match happened way back in 2004, Serena obviously hadn’t forgotten. Whatever her motivation, it was sufficient to bring out her best tennis in five years.
The match itself? There isn’t a whole lot of complicated analysis that can go into something so nasty, brutish, and short. I was struck early by how little Sharapova looked like her usual domineering itself. From the first swing of virtually every rally, Serena was the stronger player. And that included Sharapova’s serve, which was uncharacteristically short and erratic—a cream puff much of the time. Serena, by contrast, had full confidence in both of her serves from start to finish, and anything that Sharapova left hanging was punished with a clean, laser-like, blatant winner. Even Serena’s stance and swing were more efficient and committed to making a forceful play with each shot. No wonder Sharapova’s father, Yuri, showed up looking like he wished he could prolong a two-day bender for a few more hours.
One shot late in the match showed how far Serena progressed in just two weeks. Sharapova was at the net and had Serena wrong-footed and pushed behind the baseline. But the American turned quickly and bent down to hit an improvised backhand for a clean pass. This was not a shot Serena could have made in any of her previous matches Down Under—she wouldn’t have had the agility or the timing.
Do you think her win proves that there’s no depth in women’s tennis? You might as well say Federer’s domination proves the same on the men’s side—and nobody, other than perhaps Pete Sampras' mother, is saying that. There’s also little doubt in my mind that Serena would have beaten an in-form Henin if they had played in the final (if they’d played earlier,it might have been a different story). Whether you’re talking about the women’s game today or trying to decide who had tougher competition, Federer or Sampras, any speculation about "depth of competition” is pointless—you can’t ask a tennis player to do anything more than beat the person on the other side of the net. And Serena did that in all kinds of ways over these last two weeks, with improbable comebacks (Petrova, Peer) and never-in-doubt beatdowns (Jankovic, Sharapova). She won without her best stuff, and in the end she won with her best.
Of all the winners she hit yesterday, the one I’ll remember most was the last one, a full-swing backhand winner hit from an odd, running position. Unlike with so many women players today (and more than a few men), there was never any doubt she was going to go out swinging, without a hint of nerves. Serena’s position for that last ball may not have been the best spot from which to go for broke, but no matter, she did and it worked. After the mental ups-and-downs of Mauresmo, Henin, Clijsters, and others in these recent post-Williams years, it was nice to see Serena have no trouble putting the hammer down when it counted.
Virtually every tennis star goes from hated upstart to beloved fogy. The now-sainted Connors and Agassi began as punks who were unacceptable to old-school fans of the sport. Is this Serena’s first step toward beloved elder status? I’d like to say yes, but I doubt it. Her spacey, self-involved ramblings will never be considered "gracious." Early in this tournament, she was asked about the future of American women’s tennis, and she responded that she saw good things in the future for "Venus and Serena Williams." That was pretty funny, but it was also so off the wall that I decided I would just tune out her post-match quotes during this tournament and simply watch her unmatched competitive skills. Serena and her sister have never revealed much with their quotes anyway, so I wasn’t losing much. It worked. While I didn’t root for her the way I did for, say, Agassi, I did marvel for two weeks at how tennis has produced one of the most unique and unpredictable athletes in any sport.
The men’s final: Gonzalez will keep it close with his forehand, but Federer will pick on his backhand the way he did in Madrid (and the way Andy Murray did at the U.S. Open last year) enough to get by 7-6, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2