Rain, rain, everywhere, from London to Brooklyn. July 4th in NYC was a gloomy affair, dominated by a low, gray, always-threatening sky. As I trudged through my neighborhood to meet a friend, a group of teenagers eyed me and smiled at each other. One stood in the middle of the sidewalk, not moving. As I got closer, his friend said, “Punch him.” I braced myself and eased my way around the kid, who didn’t budge. As I got past him, he and his friends broke up laughing. I didn’t look back.
There was one highlight to the day. Playing pool at a bar later in the evening, I put a few songs in the jukebox. The first, “The Have Nots,” by X, rolled in and for five minutes the fog of the day cleared. Then, god bless America, the college kids in attendance took over again and it was Dave Matthews forever and ever. But we had our moment.
After all that, I woke up this morning around 7:30, flicked on my TV, and was shocked awake by the first point I saw, in the opening-set tiebreaker between Novak Djokovic and Lleyton Hewitt. It was a bang-bang, Hagler-Hearns, toe-to-toe baseline war that Hewitt eventually won with an unreachable backhand crosscourt. Each shot had raised the ante until Hewitt had finally gone for broke—the rally deserved to end on a winner. While he lost it, you could see Djokovic was sharp. He even looked like he might have improved since I last saw him. Which was a week ago.
After Djokovic survived that breaker—has anyone else ever made Hewitt look like the dumber, more erratic, less-confident player?—ESPN flashed to Marcos Baghdatis pumping his heart and sending a surly and obliging Nikolay Davydenko out of the event. Now last year’s most-welcome newcomer has a shot at this year’s, Djokovic. I saw Djoko win this matchup in Rome this spring by coming out firing in the first set and then letting Baghdatis self-destruct in the second. The Cypriot will always be more up-and-down than the Serb, but he also has the more naturally powerful forehand. I’d expect Djokovic to open up Friday by moving forward, taking the ball early, and trying to take that power advantage away from Baghdatis. But I picked the Bagman to win this at the beginning of the event, and I don’t see any reason on his side for changing my mind. The problem is that I also thought Djokovic was due for a letdown here, and he has pretty much had the opposite—he’s tightened up his game even more and made me wonder if he could be ready to win a Slam this year.
Wow, Rafael Nadal vs. Mikhail Youzhny on a side court! I guess we finally got the Greatest Day in Tennis we’d been waiting for. I feel bad for Youzhny that his stellar first two sets were short-circuited by a back problem. But you have to wonder how many guys other than Nadal would have been that ready to pounce after getting roundly outplayed for two sets. Nadal turned the tables with authority and showed off some of the best tennis I’ve seen from him on any surface. He even had the crosscourt backhand going for winners. Today his mental approach reminded me of Ivan Lendl’s. You know how they say playing a guy who’s injured is tough? It never was for Lendl, who didn’t care and just rolled on; and it was no problem for Nadal today. He lives so deeply in his own world on a tennis court, and has such a clear idea what he needs to do, that the other guy doesn’t figure into it.
I was getting ready to leave for work when Nadal was trying to finish Youzhny. He was up two breaks at 5-1, and it was 30-30. Now if this were Pete Sampras, he would have swung for the fences on Youzhny’s serve and then calmly held his own for the match. Not Nadal—he’s such a pain is the ass that, up 5-1, he fought as hard as he could and turned it into a long, multi-deuce game. Then, after he lost it, he went out and calmly held his serve. That sense of never being able to get a free point, at any stage of the match, must wear on Nadal’s opponents all day.
Now he’s got his other nemesis, Tomas Berdych. I picked Nadal at the start, and as with Baghdatis, there’s nothing in Nadal’s game that would make me change my mind—he played three terrific sets today. He’ll be weary, but that’s a relative term in his case. Berdych, on the other hand, has to be more than ready. He’s been looking for a Slam breakthrough for a few years, and there’s no love lost with Nadal. Even more important, he knows he can beat him because he’s done it three times. I suppose the match will be on Berdych’s racquet—his flat, penetrating shots are made for grass. How well can he serve? How consistent will he be from the ground? You have to like his chances, except that Nadal has been here before, and Berdych hasn’t. Rafa in five.
What else?
Venus: Just like her sister in Australia, how does she turn the ship around mid-tournament and go from missing everything to not missing anything? It must be the Centre Court setting, the big-match atmosphere, and the fact that she can see the finish line.
Justine: That was a lot of coaching, or borderline-coaching, for one match. She and Carlos were having an emotional dialogue out there, right in front of everyone! It made for great theater, but you either have to stop that from happening again or legalize coaching altogether.
Jonas: Did you know the well-loved Swede had that inside? I’m a little scared of him right now.
Roddick-Gasquet: On grass, this looks like the kind of match where Roddick overpowers a Euro in routine fashion.
Federer: Was that a hiccup I heard on Centre Court? Too bad for JC, his chance was washed away.
Ivanovic: Another Slam semi can only help her get used to these situations and put her last, embarrassing, marquee moment, the final in Paris, out of her mind. Unless she goes and pulls another Dementieva. Venus in two.