Over the years, I've noticed that most great champions make a late career statement at a Grand Slam event. The latest one to do so was Andre Agassi, and despite the epic match he played Thursday night at the U.S. Open, his real reprisal of Jimmy Connors, circa 1991, occurred last year, with that great sprint to the final at Flushing Meadow.
I admit that charting this is, like so many other agreeable enterprises, an inexact science at best. But it's a handy notion to keep in mind as we contemplate Lindsay Daveport, The Champ Next Door. Lindsay is an almost mortifyingly self-conscious woman; granted, in recent years, she's handled herself with greater aplomb and self-assurance than ever before. This doesn't mean she's overcome her self-consciousness. It's just that she's more expertly developed what the poet T.S. Eliot (or was it Guillermo Vilas?) called, "a face to meet the faces that you meet."
In any event, Lindsay is 30 now, and she's rarely looked better, either as a player with some of the sweetest strokes in the game, or as young woman who's earned the right to walk with her shoulders flung back, prepared to meet the faces. . . I think she has it in her to win another Grand Slam, despite the disturbing habit she has of coming face to face with ultimate success and turning on her heels and fleeing, like a servant girl caught red-handed trying on the ball gown of her mistress.
Sure she brings it on herself. So what? I feel bad for her anyway.
There was one glaring exception to this strangely touching but frustrating habit (oh, how often this girl has broken the hearts of her fans), and that was at Wimbledon last year. Lindsay played the tournament of her life, ripping through to the final in a triumph of shotmaking so skillful that it more than adequately compensated for the millstone she's been lugging across the courts of the world ever since her career began: herself.
This girl isn't the greatest mover, and she can now admit that without the sparkle vanishing from her lively and often mischevous eyes. As she said after she dismantled Patty Schnyder at the Open yesterday, in response to the suggestion that she would have to "outslug" Justine Henin-Hardenne if she is to have any chance in their quarterfinal match-up:
Well, I'm not gonna outrun her. So my options are, you know...I don't have tons of backup options. I'm gonna have to try and get the first hit on the rally and, again, try to keep the points shorter rather than longer.
Well put.
Lindsay is 30 now, and the sense many of us had at Wimbedon last year was that she was cheated out of a well-earned, parting Grand Slam title. "Cheated" may not be the best word, because Venus Williams played the match of a lifetime and produced the best example of pure, fearless tennis that I've ever seen from a WTA battlewagon in an extremely close match; we all know how easy it is to play like Diana the Huntress when you're beating up on some poor turnip whose name is alphabet soup. That occassion was different; it was cat-on-cat, not cat-on-mouse. And in the end whomever lost could be said to have been dealt a low blow by fate.
So, given my hippy-dippy view of tennis as a game played out by shadows cast upon the backlit canvas of the psyche, you can probably see why I'm taking the sentimental position that there is still a bit of unfinished business in the career of Mrs. Jon Leach. Sure, she may go out and go up 3-1 and then play the role of the innocent by-stander as The Little Backhand That May Never Quit Again reels off 11 straight games. What the hell, it's good to get your heart broke now and then, just so you know it's still there.
But wouldn't it be delicious and ironic (how often those two travel together) to witness a crowd of 22,000 on women's final day take all of that love that Andre Agassi shot into their hearts when he said 'dios and pour it all over Lindsay?
Of course, the down side of this pleasant scenario is that if that were to happen, her immediate response would be to try to crawl under the Evian cooler. For, as she cheerily replied when I asked her if she would ever consider announcing that this would be, say, her last year on the tour, or her very last tournament:
I could never do that! Like I said, I'm not that courageous (unlike Andre). You know, Andre was amazing at that. But I think you find ?? besides, I think Chris did it, as well. A lot of players seem to do it more privately. I'm sure that that would be the case for me.
So that's The Champ Next Door. She's made over $21 million in prize money and a brace (at last count) of rottweillers that a hip-hop star would envy, but instead of representin', she's scoping out the exits, just in case that spotlight begins crawling her way.
Lindsay: you've got to get over this. You won't get over this.
So far this year, Lindsay's played just three tournaments since March (thanks to a back injury; sound familiar?) She's played in 15 U.S. Opens, managing to find a way to lose half-a-dozen that she had a good shot at winning. She passed out at home and suffered a concussion earlier this year and dealt with some family-related issues too personal for her to go into in Press Therapy. Would somebody please tell this girl that she's got good reason to expect something - anything - really, really good to happen to her?
Some of you may be thinking, there he goes again. . . Then again, when I asked her if she was at all aware of this signature farewell gesture, that last Big Run demanded by the Inner Ham of every great player, she said:
You know, I don't know. Everything has to kind of fall into place for a player at a Grand Slam. I know I certainly had that run last year at Wimbledon, came up just short. I felt like I played so well through the whole tournament. It's still too early to say here, ironically, even though I'm in the quarters. It's deep in the tournament, but still so far away from making the real penetrable (sic) run. But, I mean, I will say this is the most, like, fun and relaxed I've ever had at a Grand Slam, and I think because I didn't think I'd be at this point. So it's been enjoyable. But the really tough part is just now coming up.
Someone else jumped in to note that she seemed to throw in a little extra wave to the crowd after the Schnyder match, and wondered if it was an attempt on her part to try to soak up the experience. She answered that with an astute observation:
Uhm, no. I think that the last two days have been so fun playing on those two courts. I mean, they're definitely more into the tennis on grandstand and Armstrong than sometimes on Ashe. Although in Ashe, they really get into it in a close match. But it's been fun to have the fans out there pulling for me. I've really enjoyed the last two days playing.
For Lindsay, who likes to keep her cards close to her chest (you don't salt away more dough than an inside trader by shooting off your mouth), that's quite the confession. Is this Andre surf-the-love thing catching, perhaps?
No, I mean, he (Andre) is one of a kind. He's remarkable. You know, I think how he did it was extremely courageous, and I don't think I would ever be that courageous in terms of saying something like he did. I think it would be much more private, and I don't think I'll necessarily know until it's over.
In other words, you - and I will be the last to know. Aw heck, let's get our hearts broke anyway.