Has the tennis world been complaining about the wrong thing this week in Madrid? While fans and press and (mostly male) players have been staring angrily at the blue clay, we’ve haven't been paying a whole lot of attention to the women playing alongside them. That’s not entirely, or even mostly, our fault. In the U.S., there has been no TV coverage of the WTA as of yet, even on something known as the Tennis Channel, and Internet streams were largely dry early in the week.
Worse, the fans onsite at the Caja Magica appeared to shun stars like Serena, Maria, and Vika as well. It was a surreal sight this morning to wake up and watch Williams and Sharapova, celebrities of the first magnitude, walk into center court in front of pretty much no one. It’s not as if spectators have been encouraged to visit the women, though. Night matches have gone almost exclusively to the ATP, and the press has spent almost all of its time talking to Rafa and Novak and company—Serena wasn’t even requested for a press conference before her match with Caroline Wozniacki .
I would blame this on a lingering European disinterest in women’s tennis—it’s still tangible at the French Open—except that last week Stuttgart was well attended. I would blame it on the drive toward dual-gender events, which can leave the women looking like second-class citizens when it comes to scheduling. But next week’s combined tournament in Rome does its best to feature the ladies. It must be Madrid, the site of one of the most bitter weeks of tennis that I can remember. I’ll finish it with a few quick notes on Friday’s matches.
Welcome Varvara Lepchenko. The left-handed Uzbek-turned-American qualifier finally lost today to Aga Radwanska, but it was a heck of a run. She even passed Venus Williams in the rankings and possibly on the list to make the U.S. Olympic team. I confess that I had never seen Lepchencko play until today, even though she’s 25 and resides in my home state of Pennsylvania, of all places. I liked what I saw, both in her heavy-hitting game and her relaxed demeanor. She doesn’t shriek, she doesn’t keep her fist in a permanent clench, and she seems to take things as they come out there. Her ambling gait reminded me of someone’s—maybe a young Martina Navratilova’s.
Lepchencko pushed Radwanska around with her heavy strokes and controlled a lot of the rallies, eventually losing two competitive 6-4 sets. Still, she was a cut below the world No. 3, and Radwanska showed why. She kept making her shots, while Lepchenko missed a few more here and there at the end of each set. That was the difference. Such is the difference between No. 3 and No. 77.
This fact was duly noted by the TennisTV commentator, in a fairly painful-sounding way. When Radwanska went up 5-2 in the second set, he said, "She has surely broken the spine of her opponent now." Ouch.
When I saw Fernando Verdasco trudge on to center court this morning, I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. He has to go out there, now, to face the bullet-hitting Tomas Berdych, a few hours after the biggest win of his career? It reminded me of watching Julien Benneteau walk off in tears after beating Roger Federer for the first and only time, at the 2009 Paris Masters, and then seeing him go out of the event one round later. The same thing happened to Verdasco today. He was done before he knew what hit him, 6-1, 6-2.
At his press conference yesterday Verdasco had told himself, “I have to calm down,” so he could get ready for his next match. Now he can calm down. And he can savor a memorable moment, even if it was frustratingly fleeting. The Grand Slams are grand, the Masters events are cruel.
To the surprise of probably not all that many, Novak Djokovic followed his partner in disgruntlement, Rafael Nadal, out of Madrid and on to Rome today. Nole, like Rafa, was beaten by a fellow countryman, Janko Tipsarevic, whom he normally owns. Djokovic was flat from the start, but he appeared ready to give it a go until the end of the first set. Of all the players I watched this week, Djokovic had the most trouble with his footing on the surface. No one slipped, skidded, or spun out as often as he did. Novak does a lot of sliding—even on hard courts—and scrambling and defending along the baseline, so I guess this made sense. Or maybe he was just wearing the wrong shoes. After a few more skids and twirls near the end of the first, and a few bad shots in the tiebreaker, it looked like he decided to cut his losses and get out of town. His heart wasn’t in it after that.
Do I wish Djokovic had gone down swinging—and sliding—with all he had? Yes. It was a dispiriting end to a bitter tournament for the top two seeds. But I don’t blame him. Roland Garros is everything to him, and he obviously feared an injury here. Afterward he ripped former ATP chief Adam Helfant for letting the surface change in, and said he couldn’t wait to get to Rome.
Before the tournament, I paraphrased Rafael Nadal in my assessment of whether blue clay was a good idea: “We gonna see," I wrote.
Novak and Rafa have now seen. From their perspective, I think we can safely say, it blue.
Have a good weekend.