Watch Your Back, Steffi!

Howdy. I’ve got a few hectic days coming up, but I’ll try to get at least one of my big-ticket posts (Doping, the State of the Game—not sure which one yet) up by tomorrow afternoon. Meanwhile, I was very happy to see Amelie Mauresmo win yet again last Sunday (she beat local favorite, champagne queen Kim Clijsters, in Antwerp).

Although I find the talk about a Grand Slam for Mauresmo premature and, for reasons most of you hard-core tennis nuts understand, amusing. Steffi Graf and Margaret Court don’t really need to feel threatened—at least nor for at least six more months.

Still, Mauresmo is off to a ripping start, and I felt badly last week about not at least giving her a hat tip for her huge win in Paris (details here). We all know the size of the monkey—gorilla—she had on her back about playing for the home crowd, and the win probably did a lot to fling it off. The more interesting portion of the last story I linked, though, is the discussion of Mauresmo’s newfound serenity and confidence—both of which are legacies not of her win at the Australian Open, but of her triumph at the WTA Championships last fall.

After Mauresmo won that tournament, I crowned her the “Queen of the Second Tier” and then got blind-sided by an outpouring of criticism from diehard Mauresmo fans, rankings geeks, and all sorts of ankle-biters with personal agendas to advance (in some quarters, any criticism of Mauresmo is seen as somehow homophobic, just as any criticism of Venus or Serena Williams is taken by some as nothing more than thinly veiled racism).

I stand by that post-L.A. analysis of Mauresmo, but I now also believe—how could you not?—that the win at the Championships represented a quantum leap in her development. The game—and brain—Mauresmo (sorry, MoMo is a NoNo for this BoDo) she brought to Australia was as appealing and overpowering as any women’s tennis I’ve seen—ever. Yep. Right up there with Steffi Graf, Monica Seles and Martina Navratilova. If only Justine Henin-Hardenne hadn’t cheated Mauresmo out of her moment of glory, untold more doubters might be converts by now.

The way Mauresmo has backed up that win Down Under is hugely impressive, but there’s a very interesting lesson for top players—or aspiring champions—to take away from the past few months. And that is, when you see an opportunity open up, fling yourself at it, with no apologies or second thoughts. For the real subtext in L.A. was that top players—Henin-Hardenne, the Williamses, all the MIAs—left the barn door open, and now there's now way they're going to get this horse Mauresmo back inside.

Mauresmo took full advantage of a great opportunity to transform herself from championship outsider to insider, and the only reality that ever matters in these kinds of transformations is the one inside the head of the one changing. Suddenly, it seems, Mauresmo has the confidence and mental strength that is the single most important quality that separates champs from hand-wringing, excuse-making, defensive pretenders.

Sometimes, folks, it really is as simple as that.

Oh, you can still doubt Mauresmo’s potential as a long-term, multiple-Grand Slam winning champ. It may even seem as if history is on your side, when you consider the case of at least one choker-turned-champ, Jana Novotna (who never won a major after her inspired Wimbledon triumph).

But I think two other cases may be more relevant here: those of Martina Navratilova and Ivan Lendl. How easily we forget that both of them were labeled, packed, and shipped as competitive bed-wetters, only to remake themselves as players whose records speak more eloquently for them than I ever could.

Granted, Mauresmo is a little older than Lendl and Navratilova were when they underwent career-altering transformations. By the same token, though, Mauresmo is a superb and supremely professional athlete; no mistaking her for any of those indistinguishable turnips, hitting their endless, two-fisted crosscourt backhands. This girl is lean, hungry, fit, and ready to rumble. Oh sure, Roland Garros is going to be a huge hurdle for Mauresmo, but anyone counting her out offhandedly is nuts.

By the way, did you see the totally lame and oddly passive-aggressive comments Justine Henin-Hardenne made the other day about her actions in the Australian Open final (see my post “The Little Backhand that Quit”)? When H3 (Justine Haughty Henin-Hardenne) transparently decides she needs to go to the press and spin her actions, you just know that the default controversy has become a defining moment—of the unwanted kind.

Hey—my resources are limited here; Luke is off from preschool and I’ve got to take him for another wrestling match with a haircutter who, at some point, will turn to me, tears in her eyes, and confess, “I’m sorry, I’m just not strong enough to do this . . .”

Anyway, I’d appreciate it if any among you legions of Granny (Navratilova) or Lendl fans (any among the four of you will do) could crunch a few numbers and dates for me, comparing Mauresmo’s late bloom with theirs. I won’t be able to get to it myself until later in the day, and will post an update on it in the comments below.