NEW YORK—We’ve talked a lot this year about which is better for the WTA, new faces continually breaking through, or the same big names dominating year after year. As today’s U.S. Open final got underway, it appeared that the latter was going to have its day on court. After Li Na and Petra Kvitova stunned us in Paris and at Wimbledon, Serena Williams was going to bring star power back to the women’s game. We “needed” her, right?
Apparently not, because we got one more surprise instead. Williams’s opponent, Sam Stosur, the woman who had won her semifinal in front of 6,000 diehards and spotty TV coverage on the Grandstand, became the third woman this year to win her first Grand Slam title. And she did it in style, by outhitting, outrunning, and outplaying the best woman’s player of her era, to the stunning tune of a 6-2, 6-3 final score. Is it possible that this was Stosur’s first Open final, and only her second Slam final? You wouldn’t have guessed it from the way she served, the way she lasered her forehand into both corners, the way she controlled the rallies from start to finish, and the way she ended it, with one last bomb return winner that even Serena, the most determined defensive player in the sport’s history, couldn’t reach.
What happened to Serena? Aside from Stosur’s measured aggression, Williams was slow and flat all day; it couldn’t have helped that her semifinal last night finished a little before midnight. Even so, you wouldn’t have expected her to be this sluggish. She was out of position, she made easy errors, and she didn’t fight her way out of break points the way she usually does. Most important, her serve was off. I’ve theorized in the past that Serena’s serve is the most important shot in the game’s history, and today’s match did show how much she feeds off of it. It wasn’t working, and neither was anything else.
What was most surprising to me was that even when Serena looked ready to turn it around, when, early in the second set, she got angry and energized and the crowd got energized behind her, she still couldn’t make it last. In the first game of the second set, Serena was serving down 30-40. She hit a forehand that she thought was a winner, and shouted “Come on!” at the same time that Stosur reached out and put her racquet on it. Chair umpire Eva Asderaki awarded the point to Stosur, and Serena, well, she got a little upset. She asked if Asderaki was the same woman who had “screwed her over” another time here. Did Serena mistake Asderaki for Mariana Alves, the umpire who overruled a ball against her in a match she lost to Jennifer Capriati here in 2004? Either way, Serena continued to berate Asderaki on the next two changeovers, calling the umpire a "loser" and telling her, “don’t look at me.”
As far as the call went, I saw a similar thing happen earlier in the tournament, when Marion Bartoli hit what she thought was going to be a winner against Christina McHale. Bartoli shouted “Come on!” (or "Allez!” I can’t remember), only to see McHale reach the ball and get it back in play. Bartoli also had the point taken away. The difference was that Stosur didn’t get the ball over the net. I know there has to be a penalty for shouting before your opponent hits the ball, but it seems to me that a let would have been in order in this case, when the player has no real chance at the ball.
Serena said afterward that it didn’t matter, Stosur would have won anyway, and Serena actually played her only decent tennis of the day in part because of the incident. In the end, while they took attention away from her win, the call and the argument only made Stosur’s performance more memorable. Not only did she beat the seemingly unbeatable Serena, she kept her cool through a chaotic situation and regained her concentration after losing it in the middle of the biggest moment of her career.
Stosur’s win reminds me a lot of Li Na’s in Paris. I’d waited a long time for both of them to show everything they had in a Grand Slam, so long that I’d written both of them off. Stosur is an athlete of the highest order, with a beautiful kick serve and a forehand that she can do anything with, from anywhere, as she proved on match point. Like Li, there was always something that kept Stosur from using those skills to their fullest, always something in her way—nerves, doubts; doubts, nerves. She had won only two tournaments in her 11-year career, neither of them close to Grand Slam level. But the way she carried herself through this one was different, starting with her tough three-set win over Maria Kirilenko last week. Stosur kept losing second sets, kept not letting it get to her her, and kept setting things straight in the third.
During her post-match speech, Stosur told Mary Carillo in her matter-of-fact Aussie way that she had had the “best day” of her career. A few minutes later, Stosur, still wearing her purple visor, looked shyly uncomfortable as she sat for her obligatory photo-op with the winner's trophy. She's a jock, not a star. And while we hear that the women’s game needs celebrities—the Open and CBS certainly believe it—it's the stories like Stosur's that keep the fans who care about the sport coming back to see what happens next. I like being surprised; more than that, I like seeing someone surprise herself.
