Venus Out of a Hat
Venus and Serena Williams have surprised us too often to count, and now they've done it again by borrowing an ancient secret of legerdemain — if you want to make a coin disappear or a rabbit pop out of a hat, the go-to strategy is finding a way to make your audience take it's collective eye off whatever your hand is doing.
Thus, just when everybody was wondering if Serena Williams could return from yet another layoff to stop Victoria Azarenka, the WTA's No. 1 juggernaut, and as headline writers were already mulling over potential Serena comeback headlines, Serena's older sister Venus, now No. 134 in the rankings, quietly slipped into the Sony Ericsson Open draw via the back door (known in tennis as a "wild card").
Venus is 31. She's had a string of injuries as long as John Isner's arm. She's also been fighting a long battle with Sjogren's syndrome, an auto-immune disease that causes joint pain and swelling, and dry mouth and eyes (it may feel as if you have sand in your eyes if you have Sjogrens) — none of which can be called irrelevant to your profession if it happens to be tennis.
Still, Venus wants to play. And Miami is just down the Interstate from her home in Palm Beach Gardens. So she drove on down, and nobody thought too much about it — partly because she hadn't played a tournament in six months, or won one in well over two years (her last title: Acapulco in early March of 2010), and partly because this also happened to be the first tournament featuring her kid sister Serena since the younger Williams limped out of the Australian Open on a bad ankle, a fourth-round loser to Ekatarina Makarova.
But Serena has won a tournament recently — about six months ago (Toronto), and she was a 2011 U.S. Open finalist. She's ranked No. 12 and seeded No. 10 at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami and — trust me on this — the other WTA pros are casting nervous glances at the draw, tracking Serena's progress.
Now they'll also be darting looks at the progress of Venus, who, incidentally is not on the same side of the draw as Serena (just sayin').
In her first match, Venus demolished Kimiko Date-Krumm, a 6-0, 6-3 triumph dimmed somewhat by the fact that Date-Krumm is a full decade older than Venus. In her second match, Venus lit up the Miami night with a startlingly unexpected win over the No. 3 seed and Wimbledon champ, Petra Kvitova. Just 22, Kivota came within a hair's breadth of snatching the year-end No. 1 ranking for 2011 from Caroline Wozniacki, and she was tipped by many pundits to be the next No. 1 — until Azarenka came along to spoil the order of succession.
This was Venus's first win over a Top 3 opponent since she stopped Svetlana Kuznetsova at the 2009 WTA Championships, and her first big win since the Sjogren's caught up to her (the disease is often difficult to diagnose early in life). The condition has so pre-occupied her that it may have had a liberating effect on her tennis mind and altered her perspective for the better. We read or hear often enough of people who have found salvation, or renewed commitment or passion, in adversity.
In her post-match presser, Venus said of her expectations: "I didn't know what to expect, um, at all. Just to try to be here was pretty much. . ." She hesitated and changed course, "I mean, I know I can play. This is one thing that I know. But how I'm gonna do, I never really know. Definitely I don't know that every day. So it's great to have a win like this."
That's about as close as you'll come a confession from Venus, who likes to play her cards close to her breast. Later, though, she added: "Hopefully I have a new lease on life. I just want to feel good. I just want to feel good enough to play. That's all I ever want when I get on the court."
In other words, for Venus it may not be as much about winning as it has been in the past, as it is for players who are nearly a decade younger, healthier, and have a degree and type of hunger that no 31-year old, never mind one who has seven Grand Slams singles trophies lying around somewhere, can sustain under a combination of such unusual circumstances.
Let it roll, V. Why not?
So maybe this simplified slate of ambitions and hopes turns out to be a good thing for Venus. It's one thing to feel, as she does, that you're playing with house money; it's another to be doing it when, like Venus, you have the ability and, more important, experience to do some serious damage.
"I mean, I've got nothing to lose," Venus pointed out. "Like literally — I have nothing to lose. So I think if there's anyone on this tour besides me and maybe (Alisa) Kleybanova (a young Russian who's recovering from treatment for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and playing her first comeback event in Miami this week) — we have the least amount to lose than anyone on tour. Everything, every shot is a victory and a blessing."
Those are powerful sentiments, and dangerous ones in a player as accomplished as Venus Williams. The road ahead certainly isn't smooth and easy, but you could do worse than having No. 5 seed Agneizska Radwanska as your major stumbling block to the semifinals. Can it be that Venus won this title 11 years ago (d. Capriati in 2001) — and may contend for it again?
The magician has pulled another rabbit out of the hat while our attention was diverted. I don't even want to imagine what her next trick might be.