The Quick and the Dead

Whoever said you can't go home again, or that you can't re-live the past, or that time waits for no man, is full of crap. Yesterday, on another sun-shot, clinging to summer kind of day at the US Open, Venus took us back - back to 2001, back as far as 2000 (the year she first won this tournament), with a display of persuasive power tennis the likes of which we had not seen from her at the US Open in a long time.

Just three hours after her sister, Serena, booked her quarterfinal berth at the USTABJKNTC, Venus did the same, but in even more impressive fashion. Serena beat the surprise Wimbledon finalist Marion Bartoli, but Venus crushed the most talked-about player of the year, Ana Ivanovic. And the way she dismissed the French Open finalist, 6-4,6-2, left little doubt about her prospects of winning here for the first time since 2001.

Fashionista that I am, let me wax poetic about that dress before we get down to the X's and O's. How cool is it? It's only the perfect combination of traditional (it being a dress that's pleated and contains a fair amount of white) and innovative, which is the closest I can come to saying "non-traditional" without resorting to words like rebellious, or edgy, which are toxic, much like the bullt things and bullt people to which they are so often applied.

Then there's that distinct but seldom seen green color. At a time when everything is Army green, or loden, or pine, or teal, or something-or-other green  it's just. . . well, green. How 'bout that!  The closest thing to it is one of those cheesy St. Patrick's Day t-shirts, but there's nothing cheesy about the dress. Welcome a new color to pro tennis - what the hail have Nike, Fila and Adidas been thinking all these years?

The dress is a terrific combination of color and, well, quiet. It's complicated - pleats on the bottom, collar up top (Ted Tinling is having an ecstatic fit in the grave I helped put him in, but that's a story best left for another time), and it's two-tone, kind of like a slick 1950s convertible. But it all adds up to something highly stylish and classic - neither self-consciously retro nor hidebound. I like to think of it as Venus's Boys of Summer dress.

Hey, I keep going like this and I'll soon be having sushi with Roger and Anna Wintour at Nobu!

But the only reason I give a hang about that dress, or bothered to figure out why I thought it looked nice, is because it somehow seems a great metaphor for that long drink of water wearing it. Today, Venus's game was, like that dress, pitch perfect. Complex (there is that wild follow-through and all those long limbs flying around) but in a way that adds up to elegant and simply divine.

Venus was fierce today. She broke 120 MPH on her serve routinely, and her game radiated a sense of purpose that is rarely seen in the cat-and-mouse WTA game. She took the game to Ivanovic, and I was left wondering if Ana really has the speed, mobility and explosive capacity that is required to play even-up with the Henins and Serenas of this world. The court speed in Arthur Ashe vividly shows why fast court tennis is more athletic than clay-court tennis. On the red clay of Roland Garros, Ivanovic gets an extra half-step to the ball, because it loses so much speed on the bounce.

But here, there are just the quick and the dead. Get the body bag for poor Ana.

Some of the players and commentators here have been saying that the court speed here is even faster than the grass at Wimbledon, and I can't entirely buy that. Or, I have to believe that while the ball may come off the surface faster, I know it also bounces higher, which cancels out some of the speed - nothing is real-world "faster" than a low-bouncing court. Whatever the case, it seemed to me that Venus was playing with the same aggression and purpose that colored her run to the title at Wimbledon. When I asked her about that, she said:

I don't know about y'all, but that's music to my ears. And the way Venus played today takes me back to the early years of the Williams era, when I felt that Venus would probably be more successful, if less interesting (from an artistic point-of-view), than Serena. Venus has the legs of a gazelle and the wingspan of a California Condor;  if she don't want to the ball to get by her, it don't get by. Period.

But Venus, in this most recent, rejuvenated re-incarnation, is not content to defend well and wear down less athletic opponents. She is forcing the action and playing aggressive tennis. She doesn't have the pure shotmaking abilities of her sister, Serena, but she can swarm and overrun most players - including Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic.

It occurred to me, watching this match, that Venus was in the mood to make a statement, given the hype that Ivanovic has generated since her trip to the French Open final. I asked the first question in her presser: Everyone knows how well she's been playing this year, was that kind of a statement match from you?

She answered: Statement match.. . . I can't say that I'm not here to prove a point per se.  I'm definitely out here to advance to the next round, to make my chances better, to get obviously to the title, which is the ultimate goal for every player. So no matter who I'm playing, I'm not out there to prove anything or, so I beat so and so.  It's important for me to get to the next round.

That works for me, V, just so long as you keep wearing that dress!