Vincanity

NEW YORK—A few minutes after Roberta Vinci beat Serena Williams 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the U.S. Open semifinals on Friday, she was asked if she had believed, when she woke up that morning, whether she had any chance of winning. Vinci didn’t hesitate with her answer.

“No!” the Italian cried as she wiggled her head back and forth.

How about after she had pushed Serena to a third set?

“Never,” Vinci said with a laugh.

What about when she broke Serena at 3-3 in the third and served for the match at 5-4?

“When I serve,” said Vinci, while pretending to shake all over, “I think, ‘It’simpossible.’”

On Thursday night, the world No. 43 had even gone so far as to call her travel agent and say, “‘OK, book me a flight, because, you know...”

So how did, at age 32 and playing in her first Grand Slam semifinal, did the 132-pound Vinci pull off what may have been the biggest upset in tennis history? How did she win a match in which she was a 300-1 underdog?

She played exceptionally well, of course; “the best match of my life,” Vinci called it. When it was over, she pointed upward and said, “I can maybe touch the sky with my finger.”

More important, though, was the fact that Vinci played her game. As someone who turned pro way back in 1999, she remembers how tennis was played in the last century, and as someone who was ranked No. 11 as recently as two years ago, she knows it can be effective today. She’s one of just two players in the WTA’s Top 50 who still uses a one-handed backhand.

So Vinci set about doing what she and very few others can do these days. She sliced her one-hander low and forced Serena to hit up on the ball, which kept her off-balance. Vinci also used the shot to move into the net, where she won 18 of 25 points.

But while her backhand was distinctive, it was her forehand that was the revelation. Vinci smacked the shot with a loose, free-flowing motion, and the flat pace she generated with it seemed to catch Serena by surprise. Vinci hit just 10 winners from that side, but more significant is the fact that she made just nine mistakes with it. Vinci was aggressive but measured in her attack, and she forced nearly as many errors from Serena’s racquet as Serena did from hers.

While Vinci said her serve was a “little bit up and down,” she did a good job mixing it up, and again keeping Serena from ever locking in. Rather than try to end points outright, Vinci played old-fashioned, high-percentage, move-the-other-player-out-of-position, cause-and-effect tennis. The style was by the book, but the effect was stunning.

“On my second serve,” Vinci said, “I have a lot of problems, because I saw her really, at the net, really. So I said, ‘OK, if I don’t make a good second serve, she always push me a lot. So was tough. But sometimes I change. Not always a kick, but sometimes slice on her forehand. Was not easy.”

From a distance, you might think that Serena was overconfident, or that after beating Madison Keys in the fourth round and her sister in the quarterfinals, that she suffered a letdown in this one. And she did to a degree. From the start, this was the unsure Serena we had seen at various points this season, rather than the high-alert, razor-sharp Serena we had seen in the last two rounds. Yet she also knew exactly what she was in for against Vinci, and she knew it wouldn’t be easy.

“I played her in Canada,” Serena said earlier this week, referring to her semifinal win over Vinci in Toronto last month, which had been trickier than the 6-4, 6-3 scores indicated. “She played me really tough, and I didn’t expect that...I think it was great that I played her because I kind of know what to expect, and I’ll be more ready for it this time.”

“She has that mean slice backhand, too.”

Serena knew what to expect from Vinci, and after she won the first set 6-2, it looked like she knew what to do about it. But Vinci kept mixing her soft slice backhand with her hard flat forehand, and in a season where very little has been straightforward for Serena, it was enough to keep the American on edge and unable to swing freely.

The two players disagreed later about how nervous Serena was.

“A lot,” said Vinci, who claimed that she took heart when Serena slammed her racquet at the end of the second set.

Serena, naturally, had a different take: “I mean, I made a couple of tight shots," she said, "but maybe just about two.”

I don’t know which two shots Serena meant, but one possibility stays in my mind. With Vinci serving up 4-3 in the second set, Serena made her expected surge, and Vinci seemed on the verge of making her expected collapse. Serena reached break point, and had a look at a very makable forehand pass on the run—the crosscourt was wide open. But after getting her feet tangled up during the point, she shanked the ball well wide.

All year, Serena has faced turning points like this, and all year she has made them turn her way. After winning 26 straight matches at the Slams this year, many of them in three sets, she fell two games short in the 27th. A game short, but not a point—Serena actually won 93 points in this match to Vinci’s 85.

“I don’t want to talk about how disappointing it was for me,” Serena said. She wanted to get out of the interview room as quickly as possible, and she even called for “last questions,” something that’s generally not part of the player’s purview.

Still, Serena had the right perspective. She has said all along that winning Grand Slams is her goal, but that winning the calendar-year Grand Slam wasn’t. That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have celebrated the accomplishment to the fullest if she had pulled it off, the way she did when she won the Serena Slam at Wimbledon. But it wasn’t something she was going to let hang over head. She knows there’s pressure enough trying to win any major.

“I did win three Grand Slams this year,” Serena said. “Yeah, I won four in a row. It’s pretty good.”

Serena can’t be pleased to have lost her chance at a seventh Open, a 22nd major, and a calendar Slam to the world No. 43. But it’s difficult to say that a tennis player should be “disappointed” not to have won five straight majors. Who imagines they could do that in the first place? Serena alone: In the last 25 years, she’s the only player to have won four Slams in a row, and she’s done it twice. That's more than, as Serena says, pretty good.

“I thought she played the best tennis in her career,” Serena said of Vinci. “...I don’t think I played that bad.”

In the end, the reason Vinci did what no other woman has done at a Slam this year wasn’t because she sliced her backhand or flattened out her forehand. She won because she had the guts and the game to close it out; she even had the guts to demand that the U.S. crowd give her some love after an especially brilliant point. Afterward, Serena understood this as well as anyone.

“She did not want to lose today,” Serena said.

Unlike Elina Svitolina and Garbine Muguruza in Australia; unlike four different players who won the first set against her at the French Open; unlike Heather Watson and Victoria Azarenka at Wimbledon; and unlike Bethanie Mattek-Sands at the U.S. Open, once Vinci had the lead, she didn’t give it back.

In fact, she saved her best tennis for last. Serving at 5-4, shaking life a leaf and still believing it was “impossible,” Vinci carved under a gorgeous slice approach and followed it with a half-volley winner. On match point, she moved Serena across the baseline and seemed to have the rally won with a forehand. But Serena being Serena, she stretched herself out as far as she could and forced Vinci to make one more ball. Vinci did.

Vinci was asked what her reaction was, when the impossible had finally happened.

She dragged her finger across her forehand and let out a long “Whhhhheeeeeewwwww” of relief.

When it comes to beating Serena this year, only seeing is believing.