Fighter Girl

NEW YORK—As she strode toward the net in Louis Armstrong Stadium, a smiling Simona Halep made the sign of the cross as she looked up to the sky. That’s the Romanian’s normal routine when she wins, but this time she appeared to be giving thanks for more than just a 6-7 (6), 7-5, 6-2 victory over Sabine Lisicki. The wide grin of relief on Halep’s face made it look as if she were happy just to be walking out of the stadium alive.

If she was, the emotion was understandable. Monday—Labor Day in the United States—was all about survival at the U.S. Open. It had been hot and humid for a week, and the tournament had already produced a high body count. The first week saw a record haul of retirements, withdrawals, injuries, and cramp-ups—not to mention the freak fall that forced Eugenie Bouchard out of the tournament. Now it was 90 degrees and stiflingly muggy, and unlike in the newly covered Arthur Ashe Stadium, there wasn’t a millimeter of shade to be found in the cement confines of Armstrong. This was old-style, concrete-jungle tennis, in the Open’s intimate, original stadium. The stands were full, the fans were close to the court, and the DecoTurf was sizzling.

Yet for two hours and 38 minutes, both women went all-out until they couldn’t go all-out any more. At various times, each looked to be on the verge of adding to the body count, yet neither retired. Halep had her left thigh strapped after the first set, she cramped in her back, and she spent the second set half-running, half-hobbling through rallies. By the third set, it was Lisicki’s turn to suffer physical distress. She was staggered by cramps in the early going, and never recovered. On the one hand, this was an anti-climax and an unfortunate way to end a match that had been so hard-fought. On the other hand, it always felt like the last woman standing was going to win this war.

Is it a surprise that Halep was that woman?

Physically, she has been injury prone; when she plays, the trainer often follows. Just as important, though, is her ever-shifting mental approach.

At her best, when she’s moving her body and the ball around the court effortlessly and instinctively, Halep plays with a freedom that erases the division between offense and defense. If that sounds like a lot to ask of a tennis player on a regular basis, that’s because it is. There’s a magic to her game when it’s working that isn’t automatically reproducible, and at 5’5” she’s not big enough to serve or hit her way out of a lull. When Halep doesn’t live up to those high expectations for herself, when she falls to earth and makes normal-player mistakes, she gets frustrated. Halep has a perfectionist’s tendency to get down on herself quickly when things don’t go exactly the way she wants them to—switching to Plan B doesn’t come naturally. And frustrated is how she spent much of Monday. You could make a lengthy highlight reel out of her various racquet swipes, smacks, bangs, bounces, scrapes, and tosses.

So far this year, Halep has tried to deal with the sport’s psychological challenges in a variety of ways. After bowing out tamely in the quarterfinals at the Australian Open, she vowed never to go down without a fight again. It worked well enough to earn her a title in Indian Wells and a close loss to Serena Williams in Miami.

By the French Open, though, some of the fight had gone out of her, and she lost early. So Halep tried a different tack, trying “to play without expectations” at Wimbledon. That didn’t work so well, as Halep lost in the first round at the All England Club.

After a post-Wimbledon break, Halep brought her fighting self back to North America, where she had so much success in the spring. Despite many long matches and physical struggles in the heat, she battled into the finals at both big hard-court events in Toronto and Cincinnati.

Halep's war-of-attrition win over Lisicki today was the ultimate example of what she calls her “fighter girl” mentality. It wasn’t smooth, or effortless, or pretty to watch; Halep made 33 errors and hit 18 just winners, and she was the beneficiary of a colossal 72 mistakes from Lisicki. But while Halep got emotional, she didn’t let her emotions get the best of her.

“I’m really happy I could win this match,” said Halep, who reveled in the result afterward. “It was a tough one...I didn’t play my best, but I still played well enough to win it. I think I was fighting really good today.”

“It helped me a lot,” she said of her runner-up finishes this summer. “Was good I was fighting in Toronto because I felt that feeling, I had that feeling. Today, as well. So today I could finish it.”

As for the way she’s approaching this tournament mentally, Halep herself doesn’t seem clear on the answer.

“I have no pressure,” she said, before deciding, in the next sentence, that the opposite was true.

“Actually, I feel it. But I play well when I have pressure.”

Then, one sentence later, she reversed course again.

“I don’t care about the result,” she said. “I just want to go there and try to do everything I can in that day.”

At this point, it may be a good thing that Halep has no idea how much pressure she feels. She’s probably better off not coming into each tournament with a brand-new psychological manifesto, either. Like everyone else who plays tennis, she’s going to feel pressure; and like everyone else who succeeds at it, she’s going to have to manage it.

The best way to do that, as she has found out this season, and as she found out again today, is to put your head down, leave the perfectionism and the sports-psychology on the practice court, run as much as you can, and win with whatever you’ve got that day.

Halep will try to do that against another player who has struggled this year to find and maintain her best form, Victoria Azarenka. While Halep had her thigh strapped today, Azarenka went her one better in her win over Varvara Lepchenko—not only did Vika have tape showing under her shorts, she had patches across both of her biceps. Azarenka said they were for blisters that she developed from “rubbing against her shirt,” but they made her look like another member of the walking wounded at this year’s Open.

The Halep-Azarenka quarterfinal was one that many of us circled when we looked at the draw; it seemed that one of these two women stood the best chance of reaching the final and giving Serena a challenge there. Vika and Simona haven’t played since 2012, but Azarenka won both of their meetings that year easily. Today Halep called Vika a “fighter girl"; that's probably the ultimate compliment in her book.

We'll see on Wednesday if it takes one to know one.