* !Picby Pete Bodo*
WIMBLEDON, England—Christina McHale and Johanna Konta had played to a 6-7 (4), 6-2, 7-all standoff last night at the time when play was suspended due to darkness, but the 20-year-old from suburban New Jersey kept playing the match long into the night.
It was so late by the time they called off the match that the player restaurant was closed, so McHale had to sneak into the media dining room where sympathetic servers found her a steak.
It was after 10:30 when McHale finally got back to her housing, and to keep from thinking about the match she tried to read herself to sleep ("The Witness," by Nora Roberts). But when she finally dozed off, she dreamed about the match. That session was as complex as the tennis.
"I had a couple of dreams about the match," McHale said. "When I first woke up from a dream, I had lost it. Then I went back to sleep. Soon I dreamed that I won it, and woke up again. Then I woke up and we were replaying the match. I must have spent half the night playing the match again in my dreams. I'd wake up and realize, 'Okay, that didn't happen.' Then I'd go right back to sleep."
It was art, or at least a dream, imitating a reality. For the match yesterday featured so many shifts of momentum that McHale was hard-pressed to remember them all after she finally won it today, 6-7 (4), 6-2, 10-8. Even the resumption today was, well, complicated. No sooner were the ladies ready to dive back into the great unknown than they were pulled off the court again, this time by an unexpected and mercifully brief shower. They returned, and were again yanked because of rain. These women sure got a lot of time to practice their warm-up moves.
Yesterday, McHale got all she can handle from Konta, a 21-year-old born in Australia to Hungarian parents who now plays under the Union Jack. It was no different today; the women were at each other's throats from the get-go. The 17th game dragged on, with multiple game points and four break points before McHale finally converted her fifth. Serving for the match, McHale then fell behind 0-40, but she reeled off five straight points to win it. Was this valuable experience for a young player still feeling her way around the tour?
"Definitely," McHale said. "It was a weird situation. I'm just so relieved to get through it. I expected that level from her, I knew she strikes the ball real well. And I knew she'd really want to win here (being British). The next time something like this happens I'll be more used to it."
McHale likes being seeded here, but has no idea what may lie in store for her in the draw. She doesn't look at it, and takes umbrage at the suggestion that, like many players, she's just saying that. "No, really," she insisted. "I just ask my coach (Jay Gooding of the USTA player development program is advising her here), 'who's next?'"
When she acknowledged that her next opponent is Mathilde Johansson, she quickly added, "Jay told me that, after the match."
McHale is a good competitor and she feels she's competing well. The two don't always go hand-in-hand, so that's good news for McHale, who ought to do well on grass. Her movement and mobility are great strengths, and the single trait most Wimbledon champs share is that kind of athleticism. McHale is getting accustomed to the grass-court game, even though she feels she still has a way to go to become totally comfortable.
"I normally take small steps, which is what you have to do on grass. I'm getting used to it, but every single match I've played, I've fallen on my butt, just moving side to side. And on grass, you have to go for it, it's not like clay or hard, where you can continue working a point."
That helps explain why Gooding's advice was to trust her game, and to step in and "go for it" when she had the opportunity. It was good advice that might have been echoed by McHale's sometime Fed Cup teammate Serena Williams, who also won today, making short work of Barbora Zahlavova Strycova, 6-2, 6-4. But once again the question of court assignment came up to ruin the routine post mortens.
Neither Venus, a five-time champ here, nor Serena, who has four titles, was featured on Centre or No. 1 Court in the first round. I can't for the life of me imagine why Wimbledon would be so indifferent to the history these women have created here, or even to their popularity. I understand that Wimbledon periodically likes to assert its superiority by doing something other than what most people would expect, but there's a difference between a well-thought out and logically defensible surprise, and a perverse decision made for no better reason that to remind others of your omnipotence.
To think about the racial implications of this controversy just makes my stomach ache, and I'd much prefer to think that we've moved beyond such blatant discrimination (and know that some people will argue that we've never been beyond that). Does it help to point out that others, some with skin as pasty as that of John McEnroe, have also been slighted in this manner? I don't know. But there's really no satisfying answer for why Wimbledon kept both Williams girls off the two main courts.
I know that the referee tries to balance men's and women's matches, but how do you justify putting Vera Zvonareva vs. Mona Barthel and Irina Falconi vs. Victoria Azarenka on No. 1 Court today, over Serena? I'm not even sure I would have put Maria Sharapova on Centre Court yesterday; her record here can't be compared with those of Venus and Serena. And did part-timer Kim Clijsters (vs. Jelena Jankovic) merit a No. 1 Court reservation yesterday? Don't even get me started on David Nalbandian vs. Janko Tipsarevic; the excuse that Venus is fading but Nalbandian, who never even won here but did make a final, is somehow a contender can't be entertained, at least not with a straight face.
I think Serena handled this correctly in her presser. When she was reminded that she'd said in the past that one day she would "figure out" why she and Venus were always being sent to No. 2 Court, she replied:
"No, I can't even talk about it. I'm over it. So I don't care to talk about it. . . I'm not here to talk about Court No. 2, really. I just can't talk about right now. I'm not in the mood."
I think that what she is in the mood to do is win this tournament and have what would amount to the obvious and much cherished last word.