by Pete Bodo
Every great gladiator has an ascetic streak, and many great champions can be even harder on themselves than they are on others, so it was deeply touching if unsurprising when teary-eyed and emotionally wrecked Serena Williams, apparently in the grip of something she herself did not entirely understand, confessed on live television for the benefit of the British audience, "I. . .I. . . never cry for. . . joy."
But there she was, the young lady who had wept for sorrow on a few private occasions in the past, crying because she was happy, and also relieved.
She wept after having survived what might be called the second near-death experience of her year, the first being the discovery of those potentially lethal blood clots back in the late winter. The clots were a devastating blow delivered at just about the time Serena was recovering from multiple surgeries to a tendon in her right foot, and preparing to play tennis again.
The second near-death experience occurred on the Centre Court at Wimbledon today, where Williams opened the defense of her title against the mercurial Frenchwoman, Aravane Rezai. In acknowledgment of her marvelous record at Wimbledon (six times a finalist, four times a winner), Williams was elevated to the No. 7 seed, an astonishing vote of confidence in a woman who had played exactly two matches since she demolished Vera Zvonareva in the 2010 Wimbledon final, and who was ranked No. 25 at the outset of the Wimbledon fortnight.
Nobody, but nobody, handles the many forms of pressure that exist in tennis better than Serena Williams. She might be break point down in the late stages of an important match—and she'll step up to the line and crack the ace. She might be out of sorts and down 1-6 and a break—but she doesn't panic. She is both the scourge and paragon of the WTA, as well as the ultimate test for any of her peers or aspiring rivals.
Serena thrives on overwhelming the weak of will, and flourishes when the battle is just as much about the heart as the strokes. Her competitive character is unmatched, and will reveal any poverty of spirit in those she faces. Woe unto you if you fancy yourself a player, and have somehow been able to get by on a bluff, or with a game that's based on smoke and mirrors. Serena will find you. She will hunt you down. She will destroy you.
Rezai came face-to-face with her own inadequacies on the Centre Court today, not that it hasn't happened before, nor that she ought to be excoriated for it. Quite simply, she's a streaky player who can reel off six or eight games looking like the champ, then over the course of the next six games replace the "a" in champ with a "u." The key to surviving Rezai is keeping your cool and confidence long enough for her red-line fever to run its course. But that's be easier said than done, because when the bombardment becomes intense, almost every player has to consider that perhaps this time, Rezai won't run out of powder. Maybe this is one of those matches in which time runs out for you before it runs out on Rezai's streak.
Note that I wrote, "almost every player." Because there's also Serena.
Serena won the first set against Rezai, although it was a bit of a struggle. Rezai, who won the Tier 1 Madrid event last year and rose as high as No. 15 (she's since drifted back and out of the Top 50 for a variety of reasons, not all of them related to on-court performance), found her range in the second set and began to smack the winners for which she's famous. Ironically, Rezai also had to fight her way into pro tennis from modest beginnings, just like the Williams sisters. In fact, she modeled her aggressive, go-for-broke game partly on the Williamses, and Rezai's now-estranged father Arsalan has openly expressed his admiration for the way Serena's and Venus' father Richard developed his girls.
But somehow, Arsalan Rezai, an Iranian immigrant to France who taught himself (and Aravane) the rudiments of tennis from books and magazines, apparently never read the chapter on spin serves. One of Aravane's major shortcomings is her inability to use spin on her serve to keep an opponent guessing—and herself secure. Unless she's converting an unrealistic (and generally unsustainable) percentage of first serves, her opponents can just step in and tee off on the return—which is just what Serena did in the third set. The stress ultimately rubbed off on Rezai's ground game as well, enabling Serena to rip through a third set in a way that appeared routine. But we know from what happened next that it was anything but that.
Barely able to contain herself for the perfunctory handshake at the net, Serena repaired to her chair, sank into it, and buried her face in a towel, almost visibly sobbing. Those who were shocked to see her reaction—it was, after all, just a first-round match—now have a better idea of just how much mental and emotional tension is embedded in this game, particularly under unusual circumstances.
Serena must have spent a number of sleepless nights wondering about her future in the past few weeks and months. And on the eve of Wimbledon, she must have asked herself repeatedly just how much she can bring to the table, after winning just one match this year—and that just last week, at Eastbourne. I don't know the last time a defending Grand Slam champion opened a tournament with a 1-1 record for the year, even in Australia. And there was also the matter of that high seeding.
Wimbledon doesn't see fit to have a transparent, mathematical formula for its women's seeding, the way it does for the men (the other majors have agreed to seed according to the official ATP and WTA rankings). The All England Club's rationale is that the grass-court game played by the women is simply not as different from the slow-court game as is the men's, so it generally seeds right off the WTA computer (the No. 1 ranked player is the top seed, No. 2 is seeded 2, etc.). Serena's seeding was raised a remarkable 18 places above her ranking on the say-so of a committee that also saw fit to boost Serena's sister Venus' seeding, but by far fewer places (Venus is seeded no. 23 and ranked no. 33).
These seeding decisions look awfully arbitrary, given that one or the other Williams sister has won the tournament nine of the last 11 years, and Venus has won it one more time than Serena (she bagged five titles in eight finals). Venus also finished 2010 ranked No. 5, having played a lot more tennis in the second half than did Serena. It would seem that if Serena were lifted to No. 7, you could easily justify a seeding somewhere in the Top 10 or 12 for Venus as well.
But never mind about that for now; it just shows how perilous it is to seed by something like opinion. And the most gratifying thing is that Venus and Serena are on different sides of the draw, and thus might face each other in a final again (Serena leads the family H2H in Wimbledon finals, 3-1).
The final is a long way from now. Just how far was made very clear by Serena's reaction today. Will Serena have the emotional stamina to endure two weeks of the concentrated stress at Wimbledon? Although she had described being on her "deathbed" earlier this year, I'm not sure anyone really understood just how scared Serena was, and just how much she felt she had to lose—even after the blood clots were no longer a threat. It's a truism that a traumatic, near-death experience makes us really value what life, talent, and opportunities we have, and it seems that Serena's understanding of her place in the world is sharper and more vivid than ever before.
As she said after the win, “It’s been a disaster year, but you know I’ve been praying and I have my family. . . and I love tennis."
Well, she's always had her family and I presume she's no stranger to prayer. But there were times in the past when I don't think she would have confessed that love of tennis—when that passion, if she felt it at all, lay sublimated somewhere in a part of her heart that she couldn't touch. That she can touch it now is terrific news for the game, and probably for herself as well. Maybe there really is a silver lining to even the darkest of clouds.