by Pete Bodo
Hey, everyone. I've been a little under the weather, with this weird 24-hour stomach bug that my son Luke brought home from school at the end of last week. Since then, he's kayoed two mature women (my wife Lisa and our friend, Liz) and two immature but fully grown (200-pounds-plus, baby) men - my buddy Falk and me. That's my kid - a lot of bang for the buck. Anyway, starting at around 3 PM yesterday I was pretty useless. I don't know about you, but unless I've busted a leg, shattered the reservoir on a thermometer, or otherwise manifest clear symptoms, I tend to get irritated at myself when I get laid low: What the hail's wrong with you boy, moping around like this. . .
It's been 24-hours plus since I've had anything resembling a meal, but I should be okay by tonight. I didn't see a moment of tennis yesterday, but I just wrote a post for ESPN about Elena Dementieva and Dinara Safina. It was originally going to be a Dementieva piece, as the more I see of her the more I like her chances. What surprised me, though, is what a nice story it would be should Safina and Dementieva punch through to play the final. Among other things, it will mean that one of these girls will be unable to hang onto the title: Best Player Never to Have Won a Major.
Wait, you say - what about Jankovic? I don't consider her part of the discussion - she hasn't built up a sufficiently rueful resume. Safina has competed on the Grand Slam stage since 2002, and Dementieva is embarking on her 10th year on the tour. Each of them has a significant list of "career highlights," littered with distinctions hard-earned in outposts like Sopot, Antwerp, Hasselt, Bali, and 's-Hertogenbosch. Both of them have periodically been brilliant in the major capitals of tennis. But neither has won a major. Dementieva has been to the semis or better six times, and let's face it, you've got to be pretty creative to have done all that and still be lacking a major title. Safina has been to the quarters or better four times, but in a shorter period of time, which kind of makes her a Dementieva understudy.
So far in 2009, Dementieva and Safina are a combined 15-1, the only loss being the younger Russian's loss to Dementieva in the recent final at Sydney. Incidentally, they are ranked 3 (Safina) and 4 (Dementieva), and their head-to-head stands at 5-5. You can almost see the hands of fate, linking the girls finger-to-finger with a pair of Chinese handcuffs. And now it seems like the stars of the southern hemisphere are aligning to make a clash between them in the Australian Open a distinct possibility. Now that would be a match worth watching - can you say 15-13 in the the third, with a bad call (and all Hawkeye challenges exhausted) on the match point.
It could happen, you know. Both women seem to be on top of their games (and playing better than the other contenders since Jan. 1). They're on opposite sides of the draw, and each of them has one giant stumbling block in her way: for Safina, it's Jankovic (in the upper half); for Dementieva, on the bottom, it's Serena Williams. These might be daunting (and pre-emptive) obstacles if either Jankovic or Williams were playing surpassing tennis. But that doesn't seem to be the case - at least for now. And it seem like poetic justice (or would it be a really perverse form of torture) if the two non-Slammers were to stroll out there on Saturday, with that coveted Grand Slam title at stake, each one's soul quavering and hand trembling as she thinks - Dear God, why oh why did you have to make it her?
I believe the word we're looking for here is **"Pressure" (my caps).
My gut feeling is that the tournament is wide-open, and let's remember that it has a great tradition of producing not-exactly-expected finals: who can forget Safin (omen alert!) vs. Johanssen, or Petr Korda vs. Marcelo Rios? Granted, the women's draws have produced fewer surprise finalist, but as anyone who's ever been drunk and belittled a uniformed officer of the law can tell you, women with a lot less going for them than either Safina or Dementieva have popped up in finals (albeit not necessarily together).
I'm doing a pretty good job convincing myself that all this could happen, and if it does you'll know you read it here first.