Top 10 Matches of 2015, No. 2: Vincanity

What do we do now that the 2015 season is over and tennis is in its all-too-brief December recess? Go back and watch the best matches of the year, of course. Over the next two weeks, I’ll count down my 10 favorite contests, accompanied by video highlights, of this season.

No. 10: The Day the Circus Came to Town—Kyrgios d. Federer, Madrid
No. 9: New York Knockdown—Azarenka d. Kerber, U.S. Open
No. 8: Cup Runneth Over, and Over, and Over—Mayer d. Souza, Davis Cup
No. 7: Stan Mans Up—Wawrinka d. Djokovic, Roland Garros
No. 6: Simona Finds the Power—Halep d. Azarenka, U.S. Open
No. 5: Sending the Open Into Orbit—Fognini d. Nadal, U.S. Open
No. 4: Richard the...Lion-Hearted?—Gasquet d. Wawrinka, Wimbledon
No. 3: The Serena & Simona Show—Williams d. Halep, Miami
*No. 2: Vincanity—Vinci d. Williams, U.S. Open

No. 1: Fierce and Fiercer—Williams d. Azarenka, Wimbledon<em>*</em>

There are nerve-wracking matches, and then there are those that, when they’re over, leave your fingers shaking so much that you can barely tweet out the final score. That was the case for me, anyway, in the chaotic moments after Roberta Vinci’s head-spinning 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 win over Serena Williams in the U.S. Open semifinals. Even now, watching the 12-minute clip below, I can feel the tension of that day all over again.

Was Vinci’s victory, which stopped Serena two matches short of completing the first calendar-year Grand Slam in 27 years, the greatest upset of all time? It’s in the conversation. Looking back, it’s also fair to say that Vinci-Williams was a quintessential example of a "trap game." For Serena, this match, against an unheralded and unpreposessing 32-year-old Italian, was sandwiched between two higher-profile events.

Two nights earlier, Serena had survived a drainingly emotional three-set quarterfinal win over her sister, Venus. The next evening, in the sold-out prime-time final, she was scheduled to play what promised to be another emotional wringer, with the world watching and the Grand Slam on the line. In between, there was only Vinci, a woman who had failed to win a set from Serena in their four previous matches, and who was playing her first Grand Slam semifinal. Unfortunately for Serena, Vinci made the most of the opportunity.

Here’s a look back at our second-best match of 2015, and the season's most dramatic afternoon.

—We see a sign of good things to come for Vinci right away. On the first point shown, she hits a bizarrely angled forehand return winner. After that, though, it’s hard to find any signals of the upset to come. I’d forgotten how little trouble Serena had through the first set and a half. She handles Vinci’s trickiest shot, her slice backhand, with ease, and there’s no sign of sluggishness in her footwork, or anxiousness in her swings.

—Serena is typically intense, of course, but she outdoes herself here. She’s at top volume, during points and between them, from the start. Serena survived a lot of stressful matches at the Slams in 2015, but it all built to a pressurized peak at the Open. As the editors at Sports Illustrated wrote when they put her on their cover the week before the tournament began: “All Eyes on Serena.” It was hardly a surprise that after this match she took the rest of the year off.

—While Serena had a perfect record against Vinci, she was also aware of the dangers involved in facing this deceptively soft-hitting doubles expert.

“I played her in Canada,” Serena said before the match, referring to her win over Vinci in Toronto in August, which had been trickier than the 6-4, 6-3 scores indicated. “She played me really tough, and I didn’t expect that...She has that mean slice backhand, too.”

—But while Vinci’s backhand is distinctive, it was her forehand that was the revelation in this match. She opens the second set by hitting a return winner from that side, and she continues to smack it with a loose, free-flowing motion. The pace she generated with it seemed to catch Serena by surprise.

—Still, Serena came back from 0-40 down in the opening game of the second set to hold, and hit three straight aces (one at 119 m.p.h., another at 120 m.p.h.) to hold again. In between, though, we see the first flaw in the Serena attack: After taking Vinci to deuce on her serve at 0-1, the American ultimately loses that game when she drills a backhand return into the net.

—By 2-2, Vinci has settled in, and she breaks Serena with two emphatic volley winners. While the one-handed backhand robs you of power from the baseline, the upside is that it allows you to use the same grip on your volley that you use on your slice. This is something that Serena doesn’t see often; of the Top 30 players in the WTA’s 2015 year-end rankings, just two—Vinci and Carla Suarez Navarro—have one-handers.

—The match’s fateful moment comes with Vinci serving at 4-3, down break point. Throughout the Slams in 2015, Serena had found herself in situations just like this one, and until now, she had found a way out of them. As she sprints across the court to track down a weak (and weird) Vinci drop-shot approach, it seems certain that Serena will come through with the big shot again. But rather than closing out the game with a passing-shot winner, she gets her feet tangled and shanks the ball wide.

If Serena makes that forehand, does she win the Grand Slam? I’m thinking yes. Instead, Vinci saves another break point at 5-4 with a brave forehand, holds for the second set, and lets loose with an extended fist-pump of her own.

—Afterward, the two players disagreed about how nervous Serena had been.

“A lot,” said Vinci, who claimed that she took heart when Serena slammed her racquet at the end of the second set.

Serena, not surprisingly, had a different take: “I mean, I made a couple of tight shots,” she said, “but maybe just about two.”

—I’d forgotten that Serena led 2-0 in the third set. As you can see here, it could easily have been 3-0. Serving at 40-30, Serena hits a first serve close to the corner. Both players hesitate, thinking it will be called out. No call comes, Serena hits a mediocre approach, and Vinci passes her to get back to deuce. She evenutally breaks and wins five of the next six games.

—Two emotional peaks that have lost none of their power three months later: At 2-2, Serena hits an angled backhand winner and screams in Vinci’s direction. At 3-3, Vinci wins the point of the match with a brilliant down-the-line forehand and volley winner, then tells the crowd to show her some love for a change.

—That point, and that reaction, told us why Vinci did what no other woman had done at a major this year. She won not because she sliced her backhand or flattened out her forehand. She won because she had the guts and the game to close out a lead against Serena.

Serena understood that as well as anyone. “She did not want to lose today,” she said of Vinci.

—Yet that’s not exactly how Vinci herself told the story in her on-court interview afterward, which was every bit as entertaining as her victory.

Asked whether she believed, when she woke up that day, if she had any chance of winning, Vinci didn’t hesitate.

“NO!” she cried as she wiggled her head back and forth.

How about after she had pushed Serena to a third set?

“NEVER!” she said with a laugh.

What about when she served for the match?

“When I serve,” Vinci said, pretending to shake all over, “I think, it’s impossible’”

—Whether she was shaking inside or not, Vinci's final service game was her best of the day. At 15-0, she carved under a gorgeous slice backhand and followed it with a half-volley winner. On match point, she moved Serena across the baseline and seemed to have the rally won with a forehand. But Serena being Serena, she stretched as far as she could and forced Vinci to make one more ball. Vinci did.

The winner was asked how she felt when she realized that the “impossible” had actually happened.

Vinci dragged her finger across her forehead and let out a long, “Pppppwwwwwwhhhhheeeeeeeeewwwwwww” of relief.

When it came to beating Serena this year, you had to see it to believe it.