WORCESTER, Mass.—Anastasiya Yakimova awoke this morning, ate breakfast and joined her Belarussian teammates for a warm-up at the DCU Center, all the while expecting to then spend the afternoon on the bench while her teammate, world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka, took on American Christina McHale in the first match of this critical Fed Cup World Group II tie. Nothing in any of her teammates’ or coach’s actions gave the indication that something was amiss.
It wasn’t until the practice session was complete and Yakimova returned to the locker room that she learned that she, not Azarenka, would be playing McHale. The last time the two met was in the first round of qualifying at Miami in 2009, when McHale was just 16 years old. The American won that match in three sets. With a sigh of relief and some timely forehand crunchers, McHale defeated Yakimova for a second time, 6-0, 6-4, to win her first Fed Cup match for her country. Serena Williams followed her with a 7-5, 6-0 defeat of 97th-ranked Olga Govortsova to put the United States ahead 2-0. A victory by Williams in the first match on Sunday afternoon will seal the team win and allow the U.S. to advance to one more tie, on April 21-22, that will determine whether they remain in World Group II or advance back into World Group I for the 2013 competition.
Apparently, Azarenka has been plagued by a sore lower back since the eve of her final-round match at the Australian Open, a straight-sets victory over Maria Sharapova that propelled her to No. 1, the first player from Belarus to ascend to the top of the rankings. The flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles, where she appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres show and went to a Los Angeles Lakers game before heading to Worcester, didn’t help. Nor did the practice sessions on the unforgiving indoor premier hard court, said Tatiana Poutchek, captain of the Belarus team. Whatever the exacerbating cause, after her morning workout, Azarenka felt unable to compete.
“I have been trying to take [the injury] day by day,” said Azarenka in a statement. “I was hoping to recover….[but] it just didn’t happen. It’s frustrating to sit out but what I did in Australia was very physical, so the body needs a little break.”
Caught off guard by the announcement, Yakimova tried to regroup mentally but was clearly unnerved in the first set against McHale, who was playing in just her third tie for the United States. After losing a dead rubber once the U.S. had clinched victory against France in the 2010 quarterfinals, the 19-year-old from Englewood Cliffs, N.J., fell twice to Germany last year in a defeat that thrust the U.S. out of the top echelon for the first time since the competition began in 1963. The United States owns 17 Fed Cup titles, more than any other nation. They last reached the final in 2010, losing to Italy in San Diego.
Both McHale and Yakimova looked shaky at the start before the 2,697 announced fans who were assembled in the cavernous arena. With a ball toss that seemed to stretch to the ceiling, Yakimova continually caught and re-tossed the ball, eventually hitting eight double faults, including two in her final service game.
McHale quickly gained composure and raced to a 5-0 lead, failing to drop a point from 15-15 in the second game of the match until the first point of the sixth game. Employing a combination of powerful forehands and deft slice backhands, the American who reached the third round at last year’s U.S. Open (upsetting eighth-seeded Marion Bartoli along the way) and this year’s Australian Open closed out the first set in 24 minutes with an ace and a serve-and-forehand-volley winner.
But after roaring through the first four games of the second set and holding a break point to go up 5-0 and serve for a double-bagel win, McHale suddenly faltered. She lost that game with an errant backhand into the net and then, after saving four break points, lost her own serve on a double fault. Even a racket change midway through the next game didn’t help. During the changeover at 4-3, U.S. team captain Mary Joe Fernandez animatedly spoke and gesticulated to a clearly edgy McHale, who repositioned her double-banded pony tail, looking eerily similar to Fernandez during her playing days.
“She really helped me to stay calm,” said McHale of Fernandez, now in her fourth year at the helm of the U.S. team. “She told me she wanted me to keep moving my feet a lot because when you get nervous that’s the area you stop moving. Then she wanted me to keep swinging out the way I had been in the beginning.”
Though she dropped her serve one more time for 4-4, McHale broke right back when Yakimova squandered a game point and then banged a backhand wide. McHale served out the match with a confident backhand winner down the line, which Yakimova followed up by hitting a forehand pass just wide and a backhand return long.
Serena Williams started her match against Govortsova with the same authority that McHale began hers. But after rolling to a 3-0 lead, Williams, who hadn’t played a match since a fourth-round loss to Ekaterina Makarova at the Australian Open, faltered under the pressure of some searing ground strokes from the 6-foot Belurussian. Govortsova closed the gap to 3-3 and then played even to 5-5 as Williams sprayed ground strokes beyond the baseline.
But maintaining her composure helped Williams, who was cheered courtside by teammates McHale, Liezel Huber and her sister Venus, scheduled to play doubles with Huber tomorrow, her first match since pulling out of last year’s U.S. Open with Sjogren’s Syndrome, an energy-sapping auto-immune disorder. Serena held serve for 6-5, broke at love for the set when Govortsova served two double faults—including one on set point—and didn’t lose another game.
“I relaxed a little bit and started making more shots,” said Williams of the second set, in which she lost just 15 points, three of them on double faults. “I thought she played excellent in the first set and pretty well in the second but I didn’t make as many errors.”
With today’s wins, the U.S. is now one match away from victory. Despite withdrawing from her first match, Azarenka is still eligible to play tomorrow’s first match against Serena Williams. The two have met seven times, with Williams holding a 6-1 edge. The last time they met was in the third round of last year’s U.S. Open, where Williams won 6-1, 7-6 (5). Should Azarenka be unable to compete, Williams will have a decided edge against Yakimova. Assuming no line-up changes by captain Fernandez or captain Poutchek, McHale will then play Govortsova and then Huber and Venus Williams will play Azarenka and Govortsova. But will any of that happen?
“I don’t know,” admitted Fernandez of the possibility of inserting Venus Williams into the singles line-up in place of McHale. “I kind of have to wait and see each match, how it goes, and talk to the players. We’ll see how everybody is feeling. Who knows?”