Weekend Warriors

“At this time last year, I was somewhere in Europe getting treatment for my shoulder, just trying to find different medical perspectives on how to treat it and how to get it better.... It’s definitely great to be a year later in a situation where this is my fourth title of the year.”

For some players, clenching their fists is a way to point an exclamation point a special moment in a match; for Maria Sharapova, it’s a way of life. When she’s waiting to receive serve, she keeps her left hand balled-up tight. To get herself really fired up, she might pound her left leg with it.

This type of self-induced stress obviously isn’t for everyone, but Sharapova’s perma-clenched fist seemed to me to be the right metaphor for her 6-4, 2-6, 6-3 win over Petra Kvitova in the final of the China Open this weekend. When it mattered, Sharapova kept her game wrapped up tight, while Kvitova played it a little too fast and loose.

Maria and Petra split the first two sets, to the likely surprise of no one. Over the last couple of years, each has staked out a claim as the queen of the three-set match. Sharapova has turned into a notoriously slow starter, while Kvitova is forever careening between incandescence and flame-out, between Good Petra and Bad Petra. Yesterday in Beijing, Sharapova earned the title, and Kvitova lost it, at the start of the deciding set.

Coming into the third, Good Petra was on a roll, and Sharapova’s serve, the game’s greatest mystery shot, had gone south on her again—she opened the final set by committing her 10th double fault. But while Sharapova tripped, she didn’t stumble. She went for a little less, aimed for depth rather than outright winners, and tried to establish herself farther up in the court. It was enough to coax Bad Petra out of her hiding place.

The first ominous note came on the set's opening point, when Kvitova went for too much on a makable forehand and missed it wide. With anyone else, it might have been a one-off; with Kvitova, it was a sign. Later in the same game, she sent another backhand wide, and then a forehand wide. A few minutes after that, she was down 0-3. Kvitova, in a groove, had relaxed and let herself get too loose; Sharapova had never unballed her fist.

“It’s nice to have my first hard-court title this year on a big stage,” Sharapova said. “I didn’t feel like I had a very easy draw at this tournament. I played six tough matches and I came through with some really positive scorelines.”

Who would have thought that Maria Sharapova would someday have to prove that she isn’t a clay-court specialist? Who would have thought she would have to prove she can still get off to a good start? Maria proved both in Beijing. She wasn’t the favorite at the beginning of the week, but as she said, she beat some quality competition—Svitolina, Suarez Navarro, Kuznetsova, Ivanovic—without dropping a set. And, after watching from the sidelines last fall, she sounds eager for the year-end championships in Singapore.

There’s only one problem with Maria’s success: She’s now back to No. 2 in the world. On the one hand, that's good news—she dropped to No. 9 earlier this year. On the other, it hasn’t been an enviable position over the last few years. Kvitova started 2012 at No. 2 and trended down to No. 8 by season's end; Azarenka started 2013 at No. 2 and has been cursed by injury ever since; Li Na started 2014 at No. 2 and is no longer playing tennis.

No matter what happens to Maria in 2015, though, the latter is something we probably don’t have to worry about. Hand—I mean fist—to God, she’ll be playing tennis.

“This has been, under the circumstances, probably the best performance in all finals in my career I played. It was incredible. Incredible.... I have played some great finals, had some convincing wins. But with this kind of performance and with this domination results-wise, I mean it’s never happened.”

Top men’s players tend to have “stopper” tournaments. These are events they love, and which they can rely on to help them halt a losing streak. Rafael Nadal has, or at least had, Monte Carlo. Roger Federer has Halle. John McEnroe and Boris Becker had Queens. Novak Djokovic has Beijing. Yesterday he beat Tomas Berdych 6-0 6-2 to win his fifth title in the city, and run his career record there to 24-0.

More important, by winning his first event since Wimbledon, Djokovic finally found a cure for his summer hangover.

“I just wasn’t myself on the court,” Djokovic said of his August and September misadventures in the States. “I wasn’t really prepared emotionally to go back and compete again after Wimbledon and a very exhausting summer....I’m glad I’m back in the form that I would like to be in, especially in these courts.”

You could see Djokovic slowly find that form again in Beijing. He was irritable but ultimately victorious in his quarterfinal against Grigor Dimitrov. He was more positive and aggressive in manufacturing a win over Andy Murray in the semis. And he was completely relaxed and in control from the start against Berdych. The biggest difference in his game to me was where he was taking the ball. Djokovic was a little farther up in the court, and a little more assertive in his strikes—he wasn’t waiting for it to come to him. When he’s playing that way, he’s untouchable.

Still, was this really the best final he has ever played? Djokovic hedged a bit when he said “under the circumstances”—circumstances that include his poor run of form in the U.S., and the imminent birth of his first child. Personally, as one-sided as it was, I don’t think this was the best, or even second-best, final he has played thisyear: Those came in his wins over Rafael Nadal in Key Biscayne and Rome.

Maybe the fact that Djokovic has played so many good finals this season—we can’t forget Wimbledon—is a sign that his partnership with Boris Becker paid off in 2014. Djokovic hired him to help in the big matches, and he’s saved some of his very best tennis for them.

“The cool answer would be to say I was doing it for the sake of Japan, but the truth is I want to play in London, and I want the 500 points on offer here. It’s not the kind of injury that’s going to keep me from playing.”

Kei Nishikori, warrior? That has never been the 24-year-old’s reputation. “Injury prone,” “undersized, and “brittle” are the words we’ve traditionally heard when his name comes up—along with “ultra-talented,” of course. But maybe something changed at this year’s U.S. Open.

There the world No. 6 won two lengthy five-set matches over Milos Raonic and Stan Wawrinka, before downing Djokovic in four. Now Knish, as his words above attest, doesn't seem quite so soft in the middle. He wasn’t going to let an inflamed glute muscle keep him from pursuing his goal in Tokyo this weekend, and he wasn’t going to be “cool,” or sentimental, about what that goal was. Nishikori wanted to win his home title, of course, but what he really wanted was the 500 points that would come with it, and that would push him a little closer to reaching his first year-end championships, in London, next month.

Nishikori made it, and he did it the hard way. Three tiebreakers were the key. Early in the week, he held off Donald Young in a tough second set, ending it in a breaker. In the semis, he did the same to Benjamin Becker, in a third-set breaker. And in the final, he stole the first set from Milos Raonic in one more breaker.

Down 4-5, Nishikori did what winners, and warriors, do: He came up with two unreturnable serves to reach set point, and once he was there, he let his talent take over. At 6-5, Nishikori stabbed back one of Raonic’s own seemingly unreturnable serves, before whipping a running forehand passing shot for a winner. Two sets later, Nishikori had his 7-6 (5), 4-6, 6-4 win, his 500 points, and his second straight title since the U.S. Open.

When it was over, Nishikori laid down flat on his back. We’ve seen him in this position many times before on a tennis court, usually to receive some sort of treatment. This time, he lay down in triumph, having conquered his body, and Tokyo, too.