NEW YORK— It has been reported that some spectators paid up to $4,000 for a ticket to see the women's final. Maybe we should just pretend that, instead of hoping to be there to watch Serena Williams complete the Grand Slam, they’re all huge Roberta Vinci fans and they knew exactly how the tournament was going to play out.
“All Italia!” Vinci cried happily when she was asked, after her all-time upset win over Williams on Friday, about the women’s final. She had a right to be excited. How could she and her opponent on Saturday, her countrywoman Flavia Pennetta, have known when they faced off in the first round of an indoor tournament in tiny Ortesei, Italy, in 2003 that the two of them would play for the U.S. Open title 12 years later?
It has been a long time coming for the 32-year-old Vinci and the 33-year-old Pennetta, two old friends and doubles partners. While each has hovered in vicinity of the Top 10 in recent years, neither has ever been seen as a Slam-winning threat, and it’s probable that neither believed she would ever reach a major final until the last winner had come off her racquet yesterday.
But Pennetta and Vinci deserve their unlikely spots today, because both of them came up with something close to the match of their lives in the semifinals. Vinci, as Serena said, “played literally out of her mind” to beat the world No. 1, but if anything Pennetta was even better in her demolition of the world No. 2, Simona Halep. “Everything was working amazing today,” Pennetta said afterward. Most tennis players can only dream of ever getting to say those words.
How will a meeting between the two play out? Pennetta leads their head to head 5-4, and while they’ve played just once in the last five years, she’s won their last two meetings easily. Two years ago they played in the quarterfinals at the Open, and Pennetta won 6-4, 6-1.
The onus, then, will be on Vinci to do something special to change that dynamic—to serve well, to hit her forehand with the same flat assurance that she did against Serena, to play through her nerves again. It would be satisfying to have her complete an Open win after pulling off such an epochal upset. But as much as I keep remembering Vinci’s brilliant down the line backhand approach in the final game of her semi, Pennetta’s backhand winners against Halep looked even better.
Winner: Flavia Pennetta