KEY BISCAYNE, Fla.—Serena Williams made an unusual confession yesterday afternoon, when she was asked if she watches video of past matches – win or lose – in order to improve her game.
“If I’m not playing well, I watch the ones that I lose, which is complete torture,” she said, shortly after running Li Na off the rails, 4-6,7-6,6-2, here at the Sony Ericsson Open. Why would she punish herself that way, she was then asked. “Because, believe me, I don’t ever want to watch a match that I lost, so it helps me not to lose. So maybe tonight I’ll watch a match that I lost.”
Call it pretzel logic, call it Serena-speak. No matter how you cut it, if that’s how it works, Serena might want to scour the Miami area Blockbusters and pick up some of her more notable stinkers (the catalog is rather slim). Odds are that she’ll have to play a lot better tomorrow than she did today if she hopes to advance to the final here for the seventh time (she’s won the title five times, the same number as Steffi Graf) in 11 appearances.
Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be too daunting an assignment, but the toll booth to the final is manned by Serena’s greatest rival – and sister – Venus. And that complicates things for Serena.
The form chart says that Venus will prevail. She now leads the rivalry by 10-9, and she’s won three of the last four – on a variety of surfaces. Taking the court just hours after Serena beat up on Li, Venus looked sharper in pummeling Iveta Benesova, 6-1, 6-4. Now you can march that form chart right over to the nearest recycling bin, ball it up, and throw it out. This is an all-Williams match, which means that the only thing we can be sure about is that the girls’ father, Richard, will sneak out during any number of service breaks to smoke one of his stinky brown cheroots.
It’s tough being Richard – can anyone have less of a rooting interest than this patriarch? If he were really as smart as some people say he is, Richard would have gone the route of Wayne Bryan, who took his two genius offspring, Bob and Mike, and steered them to doubles. They’re the best team in the world, which frees Wayne up to shout himself hoarse (something he does with gusto undimmed by the years) without seeming to endorse fratricide.
Thankfully, though, we can get accustomed to almost anything. Hence this once compelling, psychologically murky Williams sisters rivalry isn’t quite the mental and emotional horror show it once was. Hey, you play each other 19 times, in everything from Grand Slam event finals to cash grabs in Dubai, and it takes the edge off everyone’s angst. That the women have played a handful of legitimate corkers lately (two of their last five meetings were decided in third-set tiebreakers, each woman wining one) is a sign that things are heading in the right direction. We’re no longer talking about Cain and Abel in cute tennis dresses and duckbill visors; this is becoming Graf vs. Seles, Nadal vs. Federer, Borg vs. McEnroe.
You have to wonder, do they even think about strategy, given the extent to which their lives have been intertwined? “Oh, I think about strategy,” Venus said. “I try to be as best prepared as I can, and I try to have a plan B, too. I definitely go through all the marks before I play, and during the match, too.”
But it’s not like either girl is going into a shell until Williams vs. Williams XX. Venus added, “We’ll just be hangin’ out, chillin’.”
Of course, both sisters know that they can’t go out tomorrow with sleep in their eyes (as seemed to be the case with Serena today; she was down 5-0 before the alarm went off). And they can’t afford to lapse the way Venus did, allowing Benesova to dart out to a 4-1 lead in the second set before Venus slipped the halter back on and led her back to the barn.
Venus was unaware of how close to the edge Serena wandered today, as she needed to survive a second-set tiebreaker before she found her serve and crushed Li with it. But Venus heard about it, and didn’t appear to pay it much mind. One of the more refreshing aspects of this rivalry is hinted at by the symmetrical head-to-head record: When these two women play, you can hit the reset button to zero and sit back to see what happens.
Venus might have been speaking for Serena as well as herself when she said, “I’m just going to focus on my game. I was in here (the press room) the other day and I said I don’t really take into account whether I played – if I didn’t play my best in my last matches. I just know that I know how to play, so when I go out there tomorrow, I’ll just know I know how to play tennis and then. . . play.”
Lest we be accused of muzzling the little sister in this alignment, this is how Serena addressed a similar subject: “I’m always going to be up for Vee, because she’s playing really well and always playing me super tough. I feel like playing her it’s like. . . I have to automatically be on a different level because she’s already playing on a different level. Her balls are harder and her serve is way bigger (than that of the other women). It’s like I have to be there. And it’s fun. Not that this (win over Li) wasn’t, but it’s super fun to like hit these serves that are coming at you like 120 (mph). It’s frustrating, but at the same time fun.”
To each his – or her – own, I guess.
Peter Bodo, a senior editor for TENNIS magazine, also writes the TennisWorld blog.