It’s also a concept that seemed, whatever her athletic gifts, unlikely ever to come to pass. Stosur had the 2010 French Open final stolen from under her nose, and it seemed like she might never recover—she was the proverbial deer in the headlights during her night-match loss to Petra Kvitova before the home folks in Australia this year.
Maybe she needed to get as far from those folks and their expectations as possible, because Stosur was exactly the opposite in New York. She beat Serena in the final, by which I mean she beat her. Stosur didn’t wait for errors; she hit the ball past Williams, starting in the second game and not stopping until the final point was over.
When Li Na, another first-time Slammer in 2011, won in Paris, I wrote that I hoped it be the start of something bigger for her; we've seen how that's worked out. So I won’t do that with Stosur. I’ll just say that the sweetest moment of an often sour U.S. Open was seeing her throw fear to the wind and throw one last forehand winner into the corner on match point. For the moment, I won’t ask for anything more. A+
Rafael Nadal
As the final set wore on and it became clear that Nadal had no answers even for a half-injured Novak Djokovic, the Spaniard looked physically weary and emotionally gutted. Again he had spent the two weeks of a Grand Slam raising his game to its “highest level,” only to see that level not be enough anymore. That has to be hard for someone who has always been rewarded for his best play, and who loves to win as much as Nadal does. It also has to be especially hard because, unlike Federer, Nadal is just reaching what should be the prime years of his career. As this season began, we thought it might mark the start of a serious stretch of dominance for him.
So it was no surprise that Nadal was a little glassy-eyed and somber in his presser afterward. The disappointment ran deep. But it was cut, as it always is with Nadal, with realism and an appreciation of what he had accomplished. Nadal said he couldn’t call a Slam final a bad result, because, “I don’t consider myself that good.” And he let some pride shine through his disappointment. While talking about how hard it has been to lose those six finals to Djokovic, Nadal raised his voice and said: “But I was there.”
He was in those finals, and no one else was. That’s something, too; something, in the mind of Rafael Nadal, to build on. A
Roger Federer
Let’s start by saying that what happened to him was, at the very least, bizarre. To lose to the same guy in the same round on the same court in the same five sets after holding two match points each time, and to have that guy win one of those points by doing what he did the last time, by teeing off: How do you process that? It has to go near the top of Federer's list of bitter defeats. From my outside viewpoint, the only one that could compare would be the 2008 Wimbledon final.
Federer didn’t give himself much of a chance to process it before he came down to the interview room. That’s what he does after losses, and you can understand why. It’s like ripping the Band-Aid off; let’s get this over with. But he should also understand that it’s going to lead to some raw answers. Federer was emotional when he got there, and there were a couple of moments when I thought he might start to cry. But by the end, he was able to acknowledge a passing journalist with a smile and a “See ya.” Maybe he would be better off coming down a few minutes later, or maybe this presser was a good therapy session.
Federer has been criticized for calling Djokovic’s forehand “lucky,” even though Djokovic himself said that there had been an element of luck to it. Yes, Federer shouldn’t have compared the world No. 1 to a junior who starts slapping shots around when he’s behind, and who doesn’t “believe in hard work paying off,” the way Federer does—Djokovic didn’t get where is by slapping lucky shots. Yes, there is still a pride in Federer that says, "He may be 63-2 this year, but I've got a career's worth of achievements like that," and there's no reason I should lose when I'm so close to winning. And yes, Federer could have been gracious and said, “Hats off to Novak for going for it, that takes guts.” But that’s not what he believed.
Federer thought that Djokovic, when he went for the Shot, was “a guy who [doesn’t] believe much anymore in winning,” and that he tried a low-percentage bail-out shot that happened to go in. (Personally, I half believe Federer’s explanation—the Serb was frustrated after getting broken in the previous game—and I half believe Djokovic’s, who said that it was a tactic, that "you have to take your chances against Roger Federer.") What was more interesting to me about the press conference was seeing Federer try to understand the Djokovic mentality, and fail. Those two guys play the same sport, but they do it from very different worlds. (You don’t have to look any farther than their respective player boxes—Federer's reserved, Djokovic's not quite as reserved—to see that.) Federer's comments were an outgrowth of that, and his honesty helped us understand the differences between the two men a little more clearly. Isn't that what we want in tennis, contrasts in style?
Anyway, we watch tennis players for their play, not their pressers, and it was sad to see Federer in the closing games. Sad because once he lost his serve at 3-5, I had a strong hunch as to what was coming, and I was right. He couldn’t find the court with anything. After playing so well to take that lead, he now sent routine backhands flying well long, smothered forehands into the net, and shanked others into the sky. We talk a lot about Federer’s negative body language when he gets down, but at times like these it almost looks beyond his control. There’s magic in his racquet when he’s playing well, and when he’s not, when the simplest shots are being sprayed 15 feet out, it’s as if the magician has lost his touch, and the magic has gone out of the wand. It’s a hard thing to watch. A-
Serena Williams
When Serena had it going there for a couple of games, when she was shaking her racquet at Eva Asderaki and bashing her only good forehands of the day, I had a flashback to the middle weekend of the tournament. That’s when CBS ran clips of Jimmy Connors' famed 1991 run at the Open, where he was doing pretty much what Serena was doing—hitting winners and shaking his finger at the umpire. It’s amazing what winning will do for you, isn't it? Connors won that match, and we’re still celebrating it two decades later. Something tells me we won’t be celebrating Serena’s ugly, unhappy performance from this past Saturday, despite the fact that it was the great Jimbo who called his umpire an “abortion.” Imagine if Serena had said that to Asderaki.
It’s too bad, because a new swell of appreciation for Serena had been building at this tournament. We wanted her back, we needed her back, we didn’t know what we had ever done did without her. From a playing perspective, it was true. She didn’t lose a set until the final, and dismissed world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki with a brush of her Wilson. In the shots she hit and the way she competed, Serena reminded us again of what the best women’s tennis looks like. Then in the final she came out flat and slow and sluggish, and maybe a little nervous after dedicating the match to the memory of 9/11.
That's when she showed us her downside. Like her fellow Americans McEnroe, Connors, and Andy Roddick, Williams is an excellent competitor. Like them, she lives on a competitive edge, and like them, she goes over it. But that's not an excuse. While her words to Asderaki were hardly the worst we’ve ever heard—her $2,000 fine was too low, but a suspension wasn't in order—they were demeaning, and the episode was unpleasant to watch (I also remember finding the Connors 1991 tirade unpleasant to watch while it was happening. But I love it in reruns!). Serena called Asderaki, who was only doing her job, a “loser." By the time the match was over, the word applied to her as well. She'd lost her cool, and a match she really wanted to win. C+
