*How how about we keep the handicapping going in the previous post? I'm going to set up a men's semifinal handicapping space as well, after this post goes live.
Well, folks, I personally think we got thedream* final for the women; Svetlana Kuznetsova vs. Justine Henin-Hardenne. Of course, for a long time today, it looked like Nicole Vaidisova would be the non-Belgian finalist. As you saw, she was up a set and 5-3, with the Kooze two points from defeat.
Funny, but in the past two years, it’s been Kooze’s opponents one or two points from defeat, coming back to win (she had match points on the last two champions, Henha and Anastasia Myskina). This time, the brass slipper ended up on Vaidisova’s foot.
The match wasn’t great by any means. Vaidisova got to within two points of winning, blinked, and then the Kooze employed all of her versatility and veteran wiles to keep Brandis – er, Vaidisova – from getting back on the rails. And Vaidisova is a player who’s a genuine train wreck when she’s knocked off them.
The two key points: At 15-30, while leading 5-4, Vaidisova hit a great serve (it clocked 176 KMH), elicited a poor return, but then Vaidisova held back – held back just a tiny, oh-oh,this-is-a-Grand Slam-semi here bit, which was just enough to slow her stroke and push her forehand approach/putaway beyond the baseline.
Next: double-fault.
Oh, the wheels didn’t really fall off until later, and Vaidisova played a great tiebreaker, getting back to 5-5 after being down 5-3 with Kuze serving another ball. But by then the heebie-jeebies were setting in, and the Lost Opportunity virus was creeping from Vaidisova's brain into her arms and legs. It had her pretty much paralyzed by the beginning of set 3, in which Vaidisova sprayed balls like a fireman through the four games that sealed the deal for Kuznetsova.
Okay, Vaidisova got it from both directions: underwhelmed by the subtle Kuznetsova, overwhelmed by the occasion. Why shouldn’t a 17-year old (yeah, I know what a lot of you are thinking: she doesn’t look a day over 22!) in her first Grand Slam final fall prey to nerves?
Overall, though, Vaidisova showed an awful lot of game in this match. I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone hit the inside out shot, off either wing, better than this leggy blond. And then there’s that serve. I was sitting with Chris Clarey and he pointed out that in their quarterfinal, Venus had a first-serve percentage of 80, with speeds up in the 180s, yet Vaidisova was doing a lot more damage with her delivery.
I watched Brandi Vaidisova very closely, and Chris was dead on. Vaidisova was serving in the mid-to-high 60s and low 70s, but relatively flat and with such fine placement that the Kooze was no more capable than Venus of handling it. Time and again, Vaidisova served and set up the forehand winner off the return. So what if they were going in during the first half of the match, but sailing long after the turning point? That's circumstantial.
Furthermore, she seems to have a looser wrist and arm than almost any woman I can remember (serving goddess Brenda Schultz-McCarthy, maybe?). In one game alone, she hit five great first serves and the Kooze got one point - on a big forehand approach that Vaidisova missed off a weak return.
Chris’s point was made: this girl is going to be a huge force at Wimbledon, and the artful drop shots Vaidisova threw in near the end of the match helped underscore that point. I guess her size is an issue; big isn't always good at Wimbledon, because of all the lunging and adjusting (oh, those bounces!) and changes of direction required on grass. But that serve. . . those atomic forehand placements. . . that general athleticism.
Wouldn’t it be funny if Vaidisova ended up winning Wimbledon, emphatically demonstrating that she is what some people have predicted all along: the next Maria Sharapova?
[The comparison is apt in more ways than one (and most apt in ways that have nothing whatsoever to do with striking the ball), because the most lasting impression I took away from our small-group sit down with her a few days ago is the she is being very shrewdly promoted and marketed – to use the ranking buzzword, “branded.”
Funny word. You know the words from the theme to that television western, Rawhide:
Keep movin movin movin
Though their disapprovin
Keep them doggies moving
Rawhide
Don’t try to understand them
Just rope, and throw and brand them
Soon well be living high and wide. . .
Well, understanding Brandi – Vaidisova – is somewhat challenging, she's already a very smooth, opaque package. Just as Anna Kournikova set a new standard for the marketing of players, and Maria Sharapova has been the absolute master of blending tennis substance (she is a very hard worker, like her game or not) with marketing appeal. Vaidisova is the next stage in the evolution of the blonde tennis player cum icon. She's preternaturally poised and self-possessed, she's friendly without seeming particularly accessible.
Vaidisova told us that she never moonballed as a junior, hates to keep rallies going for 10 minutes and, as she put it, “I am not afraid of anything, not in tennis or in life.”
Vaidisova considers herself 100 per cent Czech, and quite emphatically:
Fair enough, but let the record show that Vaidisova spends most of her time at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, in Bradenton, Fla., which is in the U.S., although it might have been in the Czech Republic back when the continents separated and Atlantis sank to the bottom of the sea, opening the way for this hippie folk singer, Donovan. . . oh, never mind.
Anyway, there’s a huge Czech contingent in and around Bradenton. They’re not expats, but they’ve got this Little Prague thing going, and appear to enjoy it extraordinarily. When I asked Vaidisova what kind of food she preferred, Brandi- Vaidosova said she likes Czech food: her mom cooks a nice Czech lunch and dinner every day, she said. I guess she’s seen the light and switched to those dumplings, “heavy sauces” and cabbage; this is a girl who told the St. Petersburg Times not too long ago that her favorite foods included McDonald’s and chocolate cake.
Vaidisova is a big hockey fan (her team is the Tampa Bay Lightning), and she knows a bunch of the guys (they text-messaged her following the big wins over Amelie Mauresmo and Williams). She likes to read: her favorites at the moment are John Grisham, Dan Brown and James Patterson.
When the talk turned to her parents, she became a little cautious and defensive. Neither of her parents is over 40, and her mother is on her second marriage. But she refuses to call the man (who’s also her coach) her stepfather. "He’s my dad," she firmly said.
Vaidisova wouldn’t clarify how this stepfather-coach-dad alignment came about (sometimes it’s better to get the story out and over with; it forestalls endless, invasive questioning), saying it was “too personal.” The word among Vaidisova watchers, including Czech reporters, is that her father was some kind of child actor in Germany, and this much is for sure: they do not have a relationship.
As far as her tennis goes, Vaidisova said her confidence took a big leap forward when she played Martina Hingis close in Rome: “That’s when it all started to come together.” She’s working toward her high-school diploma in Prague, but says she’s behind in her work.
She handled herself with aplomb and cool assurance throughout our chat. She flicked at her long blond hair and made one humorous comment: when she was asked where her management team, IMG, found her (they’re the ones who brought her to the NBTA), she laughed and replied, “At a garage sale.”
All in all, I had the impression that she’s a girl very aware and firmly in control of her image - her brand. After our meeting, her agent, Oliver VanLindonk, told us about what a large role Vaidisova is playing in Reebok’s current media blitz; how she was asked to do an exhaustive South American tour, during which she made it clear to him that she wanted to do meaningful things – clinics for the kids, serious stuff. Oliver said she’s “a person who cares.”
Fair enough, I guess. She’s certainly seems a nice girl, a girl in firm control of her destiny. Still, I walked away feeling a little like it was a synthetic experience. I felt a little bit like I was interviewing the newly crowned Miss America, or the new face of Oil of Olay - although I guess these days, perhaps it was a virtual reality version of some real Nicole Vaidisova, somewhere out there. Hey. she's already got a deal with X-Box, as a player in one of their games.
I was left hoping to get a little of a glimpse into Vaidisova’s mind or heart, more spontaneity (which, of course, can’t be trotted out on request), something that felt a little more “real.”
It’s a silly expectation, in a way. What I got was real. It always is, right?