Three-Match Circus

There aren’t going to be many days in the tennis calendar when 13 players ranked in the Top 10 are in action on one set of courts. This is what dual-gender-event tennis is all about, and if there was a downside, it was one of overabundance. Several quality matches in Madrid were pushed onto un-televised courts, and into the wee hours of the morning. But for those who believe that U.S. players get more than their share of exposure, it was a day to savor: John Isner and Jack Sock played their three-setters safely off-screen. I’ll just have to assume that Sock’s 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 (4) loss to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was a baseline bomb show.

More surprising, Wednesday’s Order of Play didn’t turn out to be a letdown; many of the matches were as good as their billing, and three of the four day-session on contests on Santana, the center court, were outright corkers. Here’s a look back at the highlights of those.

While the women have provided at least an equal amount of drama this week, they still can’t get the respect of the Madrid organizers. On Tuesday night, a game featuring the soccer club Real Madrid was shown on the big screens inside center court while Carla Suarez Navarro—a Spanish native, to boot—was playing her match. On Wednesday, schedulers stuck with tradition at the Magic Box and put the two most famous female players in the world, Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova, on center court in the morning, effectively making them the opening acts for Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.

If these two morning matches—a 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 win by Sharapova over Caroline Garcia and a 7-6 (5) 3-6, 7-6 (1) win by Serena over Victoria Azarenka—don’t warrant headliner status, I don’t know what does. Each was tense and compelling, and each was decided by a centimeter.

Sharapova and Azarenka both served at 6-5 in the third set, with the match on their racquets. Sharapova went up 40-15; double match point. Azarenka went up 40-0; triple match point. Garcia saved one of those points with a strong return; Serena saved two of those points, the first with a forehand winner, the second with a strong backhand return.

At 40-30, with one more chance to end it, Sharapova missed her first serve down the T. Garcia eagerly hopped back into position for her return, a shot she had been pounding all day. Sharapova went back down the T; the ball swerved toward the center line, and for a second, it looked as if it had missed. But it hadn’t. The ball caught the outside edge of the line; you could see the mark from afar, half on the line, half off. Garcia walked forward hopefully, but had to put her head down and accept the chair umpire’s confirmation: Game, set, match, Sharapova.

A little more than two hours later, Azarenka stood in the same position that Sharapova had, at 6-5, 40-30, with one more chance to pull off the upset and hand Serena her first loss of 2015. She hit a first serve toward the sideline, far from Serena’s reach. Unlike Sharapova’s serve, it looked at first as if it were going to land in, and Azarenka briefly believed she had won the match. But an out call came, which was confirmed by the chair umpire. Azarenka never recovered. She double-faulted, double-faulted again at deuce, and double-faulted a third time at break point. Williams went on to win the tiebreaker 7-1. After reaching triple match point, Azarenka lost 12 of the next 13.

“She almost hit an ace,” a relieved Serena said afterward. “She missed it by not even three centimeters. I thought, ‘Wow.’ This is definitely an escape.”

What a difference a centimeter or three can make: If Sharapova had sent her second serve at match point just a little wider, it’s quite possible that Garcia, who was playing exceptionally well this week, would have ended up winning.

In reality, of course, the difference was more than just an inch—it was the difference between playing Caroline Garcia and Serena Williams, and the difference between staying committed to your serve and losing belief in it under pressure.

Sharapova threw in eight double faults today, which was actually one more than Azarenka had hit before she reached 6-5, 40-30. Yet Sharapova twice went big with her second serve in the final game, and won both points. She had seen Garcia pummel her return enough times to know that she would have to win this herself.

Azarenka admitted afterward to case of big-stage rust; she hadn’t played Serena since January 2014, and she wasn't quite ready for all that that entails. Like Maria, Vika's serve will never be cured of its ills and flaws. But it’s much easier to lose belief in it, and let those flaws creep back in, when you’re playing Serena Williams than when you’re playing Garcia.

Still, this was a step forward for both of the losers.

Garcia showed the breadth of her game, and her ability to crack winners with the likes of Sharapova. I don’t think she made the right tactical choice by going full-throttle on her returns; Maria was missing often enough that playing it safe might have been the more effective play. But at least it was a choice by Garcia, and one she stuck by.

As for Vika, Serena said it best herself: “She’s absolutely on her way back.” It’s easy to forget now, but Azarenka held off a match point of Serena’s at 4-5 in the third, and the way she did it—with excellent, confident hitting from both sides—let you know that she’ll have more chances against Williams, and all of the other top players, down the road. Maybe next time she won't be three centimeters off.

“We need a clown for this circus,” Roger Federer told chair umpire Mohammad Lahyani during his 6-7 (2), 7-6 (5) 7-6 (12) loss to Nick Kyrgios on Wednesday. Federer was referring to the many bad calls that plagued this match, but he may have been secretly wishing that his 20-year-old opponent would play the clown's role and indulge in one of his frequent emotional meltdowns. Kyrgios had already come unglued once, at the end of the first set, when he was handed a warning for unsportsmanlike conduct on his way to losing the tiebreaker.

From that point on, though, Kyrgios’s play was the farthest thing from clownish. As he did when he beat Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon last year, the young Aussie served notice again that he is at least one of the futures of the men’s game.

Kyrgios showed it in every way possible.

With his shot-making: He hit 21 aces and 45 winners, and stood toe to toe with Federer in rallies. He was broken just twice in 18 service games. Federer said that the one area where he was disappointed in his play was his return on first serves. You can see why he would struggle: Kyrgios’s most effective serve is down the T, but opponents can’t sit on that shot, because he’s equally good swinging the ball wide. In the clutch, he went wide, and away from the obvious T serve, almost every time.

With his ability to bounce back and forget the past: Kyrgios lost the first set after serving for it at 5-4, and immediately went down a break 2-0 in the second. In most cases, that would spell the end against Federer, but Kyrgios broke back right away.

With his eerie calm down the stretch: More than the serves and forehands, what makes Kyrgios stand out is his complete lack of fear when playing opponents of this caliber. He acted like the court was his when he beat Nadal in four tight sets at Wimbledon, and he did again it when he saved match points against Federer in the long concluding tiebreaker on Wednesday. Kyrgios looked tight on only one shot, a forehand that he sent long when he served at 9-8. Other than that, he appeared sure of himself, while Federer was the one who was agitated for much of the last two sets.

Kyrgios becomes one of the few players to beat Federer and Nadal in his first meetings with them. He was lucky, in a sense, to face each of them on his least-favorite surface—Nadal on grass, Federer on clay. You get the sense, though, that this kid isn’t going to need any kind of luck for long.