Who have the breakout WTA players of 2008 been? We all know about Ana Ivanovic, and some of us remember Dinara Safina from Paris. But have you heard the words Agnieszka Radwanska? Can you pronounce them? Here’s a little help from the WTA’s website: ag-nee-ESH-ka rad-VAN-ska. Actually, now that I look at it, that’s no help at all.
This is where I’m supposed to write, “You better learn to pronounce that name because you’re going to be saying it a lot in the future.” I’m not going to do that. Yes, Radwanska, at 19, became the newest member of the Top 10 today. Yes, she’s 36-11 this year and has won three titles, including the biggest one of her career two weeks ago in Eastbourne. And yes, she’s now in the her fourth straight round of 16 at a major. But that doesn’t mean I think she’s the game’s next great player or someone who will challenge for major titles anytime soon. What I do think is that Radwanska has a throwback game, and that it’s a pleasure to watch, particularly on a side court on a cloudy day at Wimbledon.
The Krakow, Poland, native was on Court 3 today against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, the 16-year-old Russian who was once a junior rival of hers. I’ve come to like Court 3 this year. It’s the most central side court, and you can watch the match in front of you as you watch the passing parade of fans mill around the grounds. Today was a turtleneck (little too cool for a Cardigan, in case you’re wondering) kind of day, which fits Wimbledon just as well as the late-afternoon sun.
It fit the mild-mannered Radwanska. Her facial features and curly hair make her look older and more serious than someone her age normally does. She’s also smaller than most of the young women players today, including the 16-year-old across from her, and she can’t generate the same kind of racquet-head speed. Watching Radwanska warm up in her old-fashioned all-whites, I thought of Chris Evert (Wimbledon’s dress code makes connecting tennis’ past and present much easier.) Evert and Radwanska have the same modest stature and athletic gifts, the same graceful way of sending the ball back across the net with a simple, flat forehand and a compact two-handed backhand, the same deceptive drop shot, and the same cream-puff second serve. Like the players of Evert’s era, Radwanska strokes the ball rather than smacking it.
This is a different era, as we know, and to win with a touchy-feely throwback style today isn't easy. Evert, while no speed demon, was always in a rally, and could at least track down most of her opponent’s shots. Today, it was clear from the start that Radwanska wasn’t going to catch up with some of the shots that Pavlyuchenkova was hitting. When the Russian got hold of a ground stroke and put it in a corner, it wasn’t coming back.
Fortunately for Radwanska, she didn’t get hold of many. Nerves, pressure, inexperience on a Wimbledon show court, or just an off day: Whatever it was, it overwhelmed Paylyuchenkova. She couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. But a tennis match is always a two-way street, and Radwanska did her best to make life difficult for her opponent.
She moved her serve around, kept the ball out of her opponent’s strike zone, pushed her wide without flirting with the lines, and made all the little improvisational shots that you can’t teach—the volley-lob, the delicate push shot up the line from below net level, the desperate dig out of the grass. These are the shots that Radwanska must make to survive against today’s big hitters. She has to be good at cleaning up the garbage points. Back in the day, she might have been called a now-dated tennis pejorative: junkballer.
Compared to most factory-molded young ball-bashers, there’s an appealing imperfection to Radwanska’s strokes. She pulls up on her forehand, hits her backhand a little too close to her body, and has an extra hitch in her service motion. There’s also an appealing transparency to her reactions on court. If something goes wrong, Radwanska scrunches her face up; if something goes really wrong, she might swing her racquet down at her side in frustration—the tennis equivalent of stamping your foot. When she won today, she betrayed nothing. She shook her opponent’s hand, walked straight to the umpire and shook her hand, picked up her racquets, and walked off the court.
In person, Radwanska has an easy smile and a way with short sentences. She doesn’t give away much.
On today's match: “It was not the best tennis I can play, but enough to win.”
Reason for your recent surge: “I have more experience against the top players. I just think this."
What do you think of your next opponent, Svetlana Kuznetsova: “I know her very much, so we’ll see.”
Radwanska finally cracked a little when I asked what her goal was for the year. She had just found out she had entered the Top 10, which had been her goal. Any new goals, I asked? One of the Polish reporters in the room yelled, “Top 5!” She laughed and said, “OK, Top 5, then.”
Maybe the reticence is to be expected. Radwanska is the first tennis player from Poland to reach the Top 10. She’s part of the massive post-Iron Curtain wave of Eastern Europeans entering the top levels of the sport. Like the Serbs, she’s also part of its spread to new countries, beyond early leaders like the Czech Republic and Romania. Her tennis idols, Pete Sampras and Steffi Graf, were Western by necessity.
During this tournament, I’ve been reading English sportswriter Rex Bellamy’s 1972 book The Tennis Set, which chronicles the sport as it moved from amateur to Open era. In his discussion of the French Open, he talks about how the tournament was a haven for Eastern Euros with crazy, unpronounceable names. Bellamy has a distinct Soviet-era attitude: these guys are outside the mainstream Western tennis world. Today, Radwanska is well within that mainstream. Like Ana Ivanovic, she hasn’t needed the help of U.S. training, which has been the case for so many past women’s champions. You can see the idiosyncrasy of that background in her game.
Radwanska will play Kuznetsova on Monday for the fifth time in a year. She’s lost four of those, and will likely lose again. But if you wonder where the great, easy-stroking 70s women's players have gone, here's your chance to find out. They're from Krakow now, not California or Ft. Lauderdale.