!Li By Pete Bodo
PARIS—Li Na wasn't thinking only about the big, southpaw serve of Petra Kvitova after she lost the first set to the rapidly improving Czech on Court Phillip Chatrier today. She was also thinking about the kids in China. It may sound sappy, but that's exactly what she told me after she rebounded from a love-3 third-set deficit to earn a place in the quarterfinals, 2-6, 6-1, 6-3.
"I just lost (to Kvitova) two weeks ago in Madrid," she said. "It was an easy loss. And today, after the first set, I say to myself, it's the same thing again. Can I do something different? If you play like this, you lose the match easy. And it's on the center court. And they show the match in China. What about the young players? They saw you play like this and nobody is interested in tennis anymore!"
Li laughed, but she added, "No, it's true. I couldn't think about that too much on the court But I knew, you have to fight."
First Li adjusted her attitude, then she adjusted her receiving stance, moving back a few feet to buy herself a little bit more time to field those atomic serves. Kvitova is a big girl with a big game. But you know the shortcoming of bigness, so poignantly articulated in the simple and familiar pharse, The bigger they are, the harder they fall. On the ramp-up to the French Open, Kvitova quietly became everyone's not-so-long longshot to win the title when, in an unexpected display of consistency and clay-court craft, she won in Madrid. But today she fell, and pretty hard, victim of a canny rival who, at 5' 7", probably cuts as unintimidating a figure as Kvitova is imposing.
The match was a vivid example of the way a player with a Big Game, which usually but not always goes hand-in-hand with big size, can dominate the tone and tempo of an entire match. The term Big Game originally was a synonym for the serve-and-volley style, but it would be archaic these days if we insisted on Webster's definition. Kvitova isn't an old-school attacker a la Martina Navratilova, Margaret Court or any of those less successful but solid WTA pros (think Eva Pfaff, Barbara Potter or Jana Novotna) who took every opportunity to serve-and-volley. These days, the Big Game is better defined as a style built on a combination of power, serving proficiency, and a willingness to attack—and especially to attack the net.
The shortcoming of the Big Game is that even for the paragons of the style, it's usually a feast or famine proposition. You're either in flood, drowning opponents left and right, or ebb, your proficiency inevitably receding to expose rocky, uneven terrain. When you're more inclined to test the limits of your power than limit the risks you're willing to assume, as Kvitova was today, you're always in danger of producing a roller-coaster ride of the kind we witnessed.
Li won the first game, and Kvitova pounded and hammered her way to 3-1 lead. Li won another game, then Kvitova ran off the last three of the set. It was symmetrical if not exactly artful stuff. Li made her receiving adjustment at that point, and it soon produced the desired result. If a match like this can be said to have had a turning point, it was the long fourth game, in which Kvitova was unable to lock down the one hold-point chance she had—despite the repeated, anguished cries of "Allez, Kitva" from a fan who clearly has an ear for poetry if not pronounciation.
Li ran out the set, but it she was buffeted this way and that, and would be for the entire 1:42 duration of the match. Lashed to the mast of Kvitova's game, she yawed left and listed right, but she always managed to right herself and plough on toward safe harbor. Although this was a match in which the players won games in bunches (there wasn't a single three-game sequence that went on serve), it didn't really feature those familiar, conspicuous momentum shifts.
No game was entirely secure, for either player, because Kvitova can wreck Li's careful, satisfyingly clean game with a couple of explosive returns and booming winners—but just as easily make a hash of her own. That's how it is for a pro who's streaky by nature, and also comfortable rolling the die. And one advantage of being a player like Li is that you learn to learn to flex and bob on the waves and somehow just keep sailing along. Every time it looked like she was swamped for good, she floated to the top like a cork and kept going.
"She takes big chances but she make some mistakes," Li said of Kvitova. "I said you must keep working, keep hugging (sic) the court, if it's working, the way you play, fine. If not, we know why you lost this match so change while you can."
Still, things looked pretty grim for Li when she wasted a 30-love lead and was broken in the first game she served in the third set. In fact, it was so discouraging that Li's husband Jiang Shang fled the premises—something he's now free to do, having been absolved form his coaching duties, now that Li has added Danish coach Micahel Mortensen to her team. Kvitova held the next game, and Li could only think, "Okay, she just broke one game. If I break back, we are at same level. My serve is not so bad, I still have a chance for my serve game."
The philosophical approach must have given her comfort, because she held easily and never lost another game. Li reeled off the last five, thereby adding the most impressive win of her year since she lost in the final of the Australian Open. She said about her resurgence, "After Melbourne. . .I never have an experience before where I come to final. All the media coming, all the sponsor coming. Maybe for the one second I forgot I am tennis player. Sponsor coming, many things to do.
"Before, I focus maybe 95 per cent on tennis, but after Melbourne, maybe only 60, 70 per cent. I didn't have many energy to do everything. So, two or three month later, I couldn't win a match. I think about team, I think about sponsor. They give you everything, you come back with zero. I have a good communication, I say I have to give something back for sponsor—for the team."
Li gave back by taking away; she relieved Jiang of his coaching duties, a decision he accepted like a dutiful husband—and a danged good sport. "For three years," Li said, explaining that she didn't exactly throw him under the bus. "We were together, as husband and coach, 24 hours every day. For three years. Okay, I need a break."
Mortensen may get the most credit for Li's recent resurgence (she said that the most valuable thing he brings to the table is a nebulous, "positive" attitude, manner and outlook), but you can credit Jiang with the assist. After all, in tennis as in regular life, the husband's number one job is to always have the answer ready: "Yes, dear."