Around the World: July 16
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Greetings, and welcome back after a few very hectic weeks of the Grand Slam summer. The coming weeks will be also be busy because of the pending Olympic Games, which adds a certain amount of urgency to these ordinarily vacation-lazy times.
With so many events unfurling between Wimbledon and the Olympics, it's a good time to go around the world again to comment on the latest in tennis news. Let's get started.
Wide Awake and Smelling the Roses: Two years ago at right about this time, Serena Williams was wondering if the gash on her right foot (it required 18 stitches at the time it happened, and surgery later) would end her tennis season. Turns out it did, but that was just the first of a number of complications (including a life-threatening pulmonary embolism) that left her happy to be playing tennis at all by the beginning of 2012.
The trip back to the top hasn't been an easy one. Now No. 4, Serena failed to get past the quarterfinals in the first three events she played this year, including the Australian Open and Miami, two tournaments she's owned. But she caught fire at, in an irony of ironies, the first clay-court event of the year—Charleston—and hasn't cooled off since. Serena is 34-3 on the year and has won 28 of her last 29 matches. The one that got away, though, was a big one: A first-round loss to Virginie Razzano at the recent French Open.
But it all came together for Serena at Wimbledon, where she set two new ace records (102 for the tournament, and 24 in a single match) en route to her fifth title, the same number as her sister, Venus****. And yesterday she also bagged a title at Stanford.
When was the last time Serena Williams played a tournament the week after a Grand Slam? What's happened to goad this 30-year-old, 14-time Grand Slam singles champion—the same woman whose "dedication" to the game has been severely questioned at various points in her career—to go running around chasing titles like an amped up, teen-aged prodigy, eager to shoot every rival to rag dolls? I see three reasons:
1. The Olympic quest is calling. Serena has two Olympic gold medals in doubles, both secured Venus. But unlike Venus, who has a singles gold medal, Serena has never bagged a medal on her own. The challenge, combined with an opportunity to three-peat with Venus in doubles, is compelling for her, and she makes no bones about it. The fact that she many not get a chance to try for the gold again after this edition of the Games adds a certain measure of urgency to the mission.
2. There's nothing going on but the tennis. At Wimbledon, Serena dropped a few hints about the dry spell in her emotional life. "I love roses. I love red roses. I love white roses. I love pink roses," she said in a presser, while bemoaning the sorry state of her love life. She added, perhaps to drop a hint to any prospective suitor, "Pink is my favorite color."
No less an authority than Chris Evert can tell you that unhappiness can be a terrific motivator for a female tennis player who has the instincts and desires of a champion. In fact, Caroline Wozniacki can probably testify to how it can also work in reverse, with happy times working corrosively on the desire and will to win.
3. Serena is having an Andre Agassi moment. Like Agassi before he found religion, Serena often seemed to bridle at the idea that she was "just" a tennis player, and sought to shatter that notion. She now seems to have embraced the inescapable and discovered that it's not such a dead end identity after all. Serena will be 31 shortly after the U.S. Open, and Venus (who's 32 already) seems to be hanging over the precipice of retirement by her fingernails. It seems that Serena has come awake to smell the roses (being healthy certainly helps in that regard) that aren't being sent he way by secret or declared admirers, and she wants to add a few more glorious chapters to her saga in tennis.
Maybe Wimbledon Should Have Given Out 12,000 Carrots Instead: The final stats are in, and that 12k is the number of bananas distributed to potassium-obsessed tennis players. But looking at the final stats from Hawk-Eye, the All-England Club might have been better off handing out those vision-improving carrots.
Male players made 428 challenges, of which 120 were correct. Women were successful 49 times in 191 tries (these are singles challenge stats only). The numbers suggest that the men are much more likely to challenge the authority of the linespersons and chair, although not for any good reason. The success rate of men and women was almost equally dismal (28 percent for men, 25.7 for women), which just confirms the age old truism: "You can give the players equal prize money, but you can't make any of them see straight."
Individual numbers were not available, so those of you inclined to wonder what Hawk-Eye hating Roger Federer**'**s success rate—more aptly, failure rate—did to drag down the conversion percentage will get no satisfaction here.
Stop The Fight! All you fans of the "sweet science" are familiar with that rallying cry, but who would have thought it would have an application in tennis? It just might when it comes to the case of former No. 1 and multiple Grand Slam champ Lleyton Hewitt, who's 31-years old and ranked No. 233 in the world—but still staggering around and throwing punches, despite having had five surgeries in four years.
Long John Isner beat Hewitt for the title at Newport yesterday, but Hewitt's performance was the more noteworthy. He's had hip and foot surgeries, and it's no secret that grass is the most demanding of surfaces when it comes to mobility. It says something about Hewitt's athletic ability that he'd been in seven previous grass-court finals (including one at Wimbledon) and had yet to lose one before going up against Isner. But the mighty American's serve (Isner held 57 of 58 games for the tournament, and the lone break did not occur in the final) proved too much for L'il Lleyton.
''A lot of positives come out of this week,'' Hewitt said, sounding alarmingly like a 25-year-old plotting a Grand Slam title run. ''Grass is a tough surface to come back from any injury, especially with a foot surgery where my movement is so important. On grass you're always in the wrong position a lot of times, and you have to have your confidence in your footwork.''
The International Tennis Hall of Fame folks (the tournament takes place right on the Hall's grounds and runs concomitant with the induction weekend) should have inducted Lleyton in the the Hall of fame in an ersatz ceremony immediately after the final, for that's surely where this quintessential "true-blue Aussie battler" is headed.
As a youngster, Capriati was not exactly known for her verbosity, or ability to communicate what she was thinking or feeling. But I think she spoke with astonishing eloquence in her induction speech when she said:
The timing of this is very profound for me on such a personal level. Tennis has given me so much and challenged me in so many ways. It has given me great joy on and off the court, as well as a lot of pain on and off the court. But it has taught me what overcoming fear is all about. It has taught me what hard work and commitment means. It has taught me what self love is. It has taught me what acceptance and forgiveness can bring.
It was simple, poignant, and, most important, truthful in an utterly unsensational way.