Serena Williams continued to make a mockery of the WTA rankings today, hammering world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka into the ground like a rail spike despite having very little to gain in the short term, save for her perfect record against Top 5 players this year.
Williams is now 12-0 against that august if not entirely adequate company. It’s time to bring in Virginie Razzano! Ekaterina Makarova, anyone? Clearly, sending out the top–ranked women hasn’t gotten the job done.
Williams won today, 6-4, 6-4, even though she spaced out after winning the first set and allowed Azarenka a two-break, 3-0 lead to start the second set.
Today’s match also was an excellent illustration of the pitfalls of the round-robin format. The last time these two women met was in the U.S. Open final, in which Williams won an extremely close and dramatic match, 7-5 in the third set. This was the much-hyped re-match; Azarenka has been tearing it up this fall, while Williams hasn’t played since Flushing Meadows until this week.
Unfortunately, the clash was basically meaningless in terms of these WTA Championships, because Williams had already qualified for the knock-out semifinals on the strength of a 2-0 record (Azarenka was 1-0 coming into today).
Tennis players are accustomed to walking out onto the court knowing that if they don’t win, tomorrow doesn’t exist. Give them a mulligan and all kinds of screwy things can happen. This awkward situation can go either way. It can free up the arm of a player who’s already qualified, or it can cause her to leave her intensity back in the hotel room until the day when a loss means elimination.
As for the underdog, the situation is an opportunity to snatch up a win and plant a few seeds of doubts in the favorite’s mind for the next time around. After all, a W is still a W. And it doesn’t take much for your typical player who’s always looking at the glass half-full to convince herself that the victory might be a long- as well as short-term momentum shifter.
For a while there, it looked like Azarenka might take advantage of this opportunity. The first set was pretty close, and what might well have been the turning point in the entire match came when Serena, serving at 2-2, rebounded from a 0-40 deficit with a Sampras-esque display of power serving. Azarenka also held to follow, but Williams then blasted her fourth and fifth aces, and clinched the next hold with a prodigious smash.
In the next game, Azarenka hit two double-faults to fall behind 15-40, and a fierce forehand swipe off about the best serve Vika had in her produced a break for Serena. Although Azarenka would break right back, that glaring difference in serving prowess foretold the rest of the match. Serena won the first set when Azarenka hit her fifth double fault.
Williams’ lapse early in the second set served to make things a bit more interesting, but she could be forgiven for losing concentration at that stage no matter what the venue or the stakes. I imagine she thought, “Wow. I think I’ll just ride her double faults and my aces to the win. . .” and then proceeded to daydream about more interesting if less relevant things.
At 0-3 in the second, Serena broke Azarenka with a winning forehand pass. She held and broke again when Azarenka made a somewhat uncharacteristic forehand error down the line. By then, Azarenka’s serving woes were accompanied by erratic baseline play, although that’s always the risk a first-strike player takes—especially when she’s up against one of her own kind.
Back on serve at 3-all, that conspicuous serving differential kicked in and shaped the narrative. The only other break was in the last game, when Azarenka hit a double fault on match point.
On the day, the women had an identical first-serve conversion percentage of 54 percent, but Williams won significantly more of her first-serve points (76 percent to 60 percent) and banged out 11 aces (against five double-faults). Azarenka had nine doubles and no aces.
These women seem destined to meet again in the knock-out stage, but if Azarenka can’t fix that serve, it could be even uglier than it was today.