Venus Williams discovered again why she never wants to give tennis up

NEW YORK—If any tennis promoters out there are looking to start a two-player barnstorming tour, they might want to consider booking Venus Williams and Petra Kvitova. These two women, it seems, can’t play a bad match.

All six of their previous meetings had gone three sets. The last three had either ended in a third-set tiebreaker or 7-5 in the third. And their most recent encounter, at Wimbledon in 2014, was one of the best of its year, a taut, tense, mesmerizing affair between two power players throwing thunderbolts back and forth on Centre Court.

As you might guess, expectations were high for their night-session quarterfinal here on Tuesday. The near-capacity crowd was largely present and accounted for at 7:00, when the match was scheduled to begin, and they were ready to explode for the tournament’s sentimental favorite, the 37-year-old Williams.

At first, it seemed that the expectations in the arena might be a little too high; both women had trouble settling down. Venus began slowly, throwing in two wild double faults and hanging her head after one netted forehand. Instead of taking advantage of the opening, though, Kvitova slammed the door in her own face. Serving at 3-4, her ground strokes suddenly went haywire. Three straight times, on the first ball of a rally, she made an error and was broken at love.

Was Kvitova coming down to earth after her flawless set and a half against Garbiñe Muguruza on Sunday? Were we due for a dud after a string of stunners?

The answer to both questions would be a resounding no. Kvitova’s timing, and the power that inevitably flows from it, began to click early in the second set. So did her vocal cords: Each winning shot, it seemed, was followed by her customary all-caps scream of “POJD!” Kvitova, in body and mind, had arrived. Most important, her serve had arrived. Venus made a valiant effort to work her way back into the set, but she couldn’t crack Kvitova’s serve. At 4-2, Kvitova saved two break points with two service winners—and added a couple of POJDs for good measure. A few minutes later, we were where we had hoped to be all along: a third set.

Still, not much had changed. Kvitova’s serve still looked like it would make the difference. After breaking with a backhand return winner at 1-1, she served her way out of a 0-40 jam for 3-1. Venus had established herself as the better, steadier player from the baseline, but she still needed to break. Or, it turned out, she needed to watch as Kvitova broke herself. Serving at 3-2, the Czech obliged with another haywire game: She hit a forehand long, a backhand long, a backhand wide and a double fault at break point.

From there, though, both players played clean tennis as they raced each other down the homestretch. They had found their range and left their nerves behind, and they were using their serves and ground strokes to maximum effect; neither would face a break point over the last six games. The match peaked with Venus serving at 4-4, a long game where it appeared that Kvitova would take the upper hand again. But Venus hung on and celebrated her hold with the rarest of rarities for her, a fist pump. \

Over the last four, five, six—who knows, maybe 10—years, Venus has played well enough to stay in matches like this, but has struggled to win them. At the Open in 2016, she lost a third-set tiebreaker to Karolina Pliskova, and she had lost two deciding tiebreakers to Kvitova in their last three matches. But this year has been different. Venus isn’t just playing well; she’s winning. After Tuesday night, no one has more victories at the Slams in 2017 than she does. Rather than lose this deciding tiebreaker, she won it, and she won the match, 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (2).

What, in the end, was the difference in this excellent, compelling contest which could have gone either way? It was simple: Venus had her forehand clicking in the tiebreaker, and Kvitova didn’t. Venus hit four strong forehands while Petra made four errors from that side.

“These big matches, there have been times where I have won, and there have been times I didn’t win them,” Venus said afterward. “My opponent was better. It made me go out and work harder. Either way, the experience makes you grow.”

While losing makes you grow, winning makes you feel a whole lot better. On Tuesday night, as she saw her lead build in the tiebreaker and listened to the crowd’s roar grow louder with each point, she remembered again why she still plays this sport, and why she has no plans to stop.

“In the tiebreaker, you just want to create space,” Venus said with a dreamy smile. “So when you see that gap opening bigger in your favor, it feels amazing.

“There is a point where you say, ‘I’m not ever letting this go.’ That’s kind of what I felt like out there.”

There isn’t much that separates Venus and Kvitova. And for both women, that’s what makes finding a tiny edge over the other so satisfying—enough, in Venus’ case, to make her want to play forever.

It’s winning matches like these that keeps Venus playing. It’s witnessing matches like these that keeps us watching.