by Pete Bodo
Greetings from Paris. When I touched down at dawn the morning sky was bright, with dazzling white clouds lined with gold. By the time I arrived at Stade Roland Garros a few hours later, that same sky was drained of light and color, and a fleet of battleship-gray clouds drifted by overhead, gently colliding and moving on.
After Venus Williams was beaten by Nadia Petrova yesterday, she spoke about being off her game, about how it was just one of those days when, "I want to hit the ball crosscourt and it went down the line."
It was a neat way to describe one of those "one of those" days that is the lot of every tennis player; the trick, as Venus inadvertently learned again yesterday, was to suffer such days in Strasbourg, Bali, or New Haven. Not at a Grand Slam event, not at Roland Garros.
She also added, in essentially the same breath: "Sometimes, when it gets really cold, it's hard to feel the racket. Especially in Europe. It gets really cold here. It just wasn't a good day."
If you want a resounding "Amen" to that, go see Justine Henin. She lost at this cold, gloomy, sometimes borderline-depressing French Open today, felled like a tree among the seedlings in the Bois de Boulogne forest by Slammin' Sammy Stosur, this year's Yes, I can! girl- the WTA's answer to Fernando Verdasco. Justine, too, is stone cold gone.
Weather, of course, is the default setting in any conversation; so it's a little dodgy going there when you're actually writing about something and getting paid for it. But sometimes, it's worth stating the obvious. Note that Williams talked about the European brand of cold. I take her words at face value; you don't go out there in the second week of a major expecting conditions that account for a startling number of empty seats around a court (why sit there freezing when you can be sipping coffee in a hospitality tent?), conditions that make it a chore rather than a pleasure to unlimber and move those legs and arms.
On a sunny, warm day, the clay underfoot can be like the soft, inviting surface they now install on outdoor playgrounds. You just want to run on it, and if you trip, slide or fall, who cares? But on days like this, the court just looks and feels and smells like damp, cold dirt. Dirty, granular, stick-to-your skin dirt. A chilly gust kicks up, the smell of the clay fills your nostrils and there it is: a sobering reminder of mortality. Not conducive to the frame of mind you want to cultivate when your profession demands that you live or die anew each day.
I'm sure that in her comeback dreams, Henin envisioned Roland Garros the way we like to imagine it, and whether or not we've been here, won the singles championship, or merely snuck into Philippe Chatrier and plopped down in the upper deck, hoping the seat-holder wouldn't show up until at least the end of the set, has nothing to do with it.
Henin probably remembered the roar of the crowd and the dazzling colors, the looseness of her muscles and that feeling of utterly satisfying exhaustion. A sense of accomplishment. The warmth that still radiates outward from her physical core; it would continue to do so until after her shower. She was her own sun. The champion.
You know Justine; she's the "feelingful" one; a woman of sentiment. I'm never sure that even the interest sympathetic onlookers have in her matches her own. She has introspective down pat, and has any player ever used the word "beautiful" in such an amorphous way?
She put on a brave face when she came to meet the press. Justine was dry of eye, measured in tone, and reasonable, in that wistful way of hers. This is a young woman who could stroll into her kitchen, pick up the remnants of a wheel of brie, and think deep thoughts about the role it played in the past two weeks of her life. Two weeks that, in this case, were cut to a mere nine days thanks to Stosur, with an assist from the conditions.
Henin started well enough, smacking forehands and belting that those uncharacteristically reckless backhands that seem so. . . out of character, yet figure as her signature shot. She won the first set, 6-2. But things weren't entirely right in her world.
"The conditions haven't been the best that I knew here in Paris, but it's part of the game," said Henin. "Emotionally, it was difficult to deal with all these matches, I mean, the two matches I had to stop and start again, especially against Sharapova, emotionally probably took a lot from me. That wasn't easy, to come back on the court today."
Once again, we see how certain people given to introspection don't do well under cold, leaden skies. They've got plenty to be depressed about going in. But all kidding side, Henin's spirits might have been dampened by the events of the past few days, but in the end it was that familiar hobgoblin - nerves - that failed her.
Stosur is no longer the fair weather player of yore. She's a focused, thoroughly fit and practiced professional whose first thought upon seeing the conditions probably was: Wonder if they'll let me wear spikes? With each passing day, she seems more and more of a rebuke to some of her weaker-willed sisters, and a subscriber to the old Aussie ethic: Just shut up and play. You're lucky you've got a job you can do wearing a short skirt and tank top.
! Stosur buckled down and blocked out the first set result, and Henin began to sense that she was in trouble as early as the third game of the second set, which Stosur won to go up 3-0. Henin began to get nervous: "I felt very nervous, very upset, which is normally not the way I am. You know, the last few days have not been easy either, and playing all those matches back to back was not easy. I lost a lot of energy at the beginning of the tournament, and maybe today I was feeling some nervous fatigue. Maybe that prevented me from seeing things in a calmer way. I felt right from the beginning of the second set that the match was turning and my aggressiveness was missing."
The third set was tight, on serve until Henin's fate was foreshadowed by a Stosur service break in the fifth game. Henin earned back the break and held for to go up 4-3, but Stosur played a solid hold game, broke again, then served out the match. The first point of the final game was emblematic. Henin had a sitter backhand with Stosur far out of position, but drove an ugly one into the net.
"Generally, I haven't been in the position in the second and in the third to really play my game and, you know, be aggressive," said Henin afterwards. "She was in control of the rallies, and she was hurting me a lot with her forehand and her serve. But I think it's a bit more mental than talking about tennis, so that point is one point in the match that probably, yeah, tell us that. I mean, the story of the match."
Give Henin credit for honesty; it's good to know that she's aware of the difference between introspection and delusion. And she nailed it when she analyzed Stosur's recent success as well. "She was very consistent. There's nothing to say about that. She just grabbed the opportunity. She took control over the rallies in the second and third sets. She really hurt me.
"I was not in one of my best days, obviously. It's difficult to come to grips with that, but maybe it's showing me a few things. That's what I think is positive. I know now the road still ahead of me. Today I was against an opponent who was stronger, more consistent, stronger when she needed to be stronger in the important times of the match."
Shortly after the match, the PA announcer for the press room told us what time Henin would arrive. And not long after that he came on to say that Stosur would do her press interview about three hours later - after her doubles match. It's not like beating Justine Henin at Roland Garros is sufficient reason to bask in glory and neglect your due diligence to the game of doubles, as well as a partner who's depending on you, right?
But that's the old Aussie way, and Stosur is doing a fair job, on various levels, representing it these days.