NEW YORK—For anyone other than Serena Williams and the Top 4 men, tennis is a daily struggle. A struggle to break bad habits, to live up to your potential, to learn new things, to feel good about yourself. That sounds a lot like everyday life for the rest of us, doesn’t it? At the U.S. Open, as you walk from court to court and see the players you’ve watched for so long try to overcome their flaws one more time, the frustrations of tennis can begin to look awfully familiar.
This was a long, hot Friday at Flushing Meadows, with matches and fans as far as the eye could see—and beyond. It drew more spectators than any other day in the history of the Open. What did all of those thousands of fans see happening on court? If they looked closely, they might have caught their own reflections in the players’ anguished, bemused, relieved, and occasionally overjoyed faces. Here’s a look at four of those who showed up for the struggle again today, and how they fared.
“Great Britain, eh?”
This question, uttered with the faintest bit of disbelief, comes from a woman in one of the front rows of Louis Armstrong Stadium. She’s attempting to figure out who the “nice-looking girl” playing Li Na is, ad she’s consulted her program to discover where she’s from. It’s Laura Robson, teenage conqueror of Kim Clijsters. It isn’t her age that seems unfathomable to this fan, but her nationality. “I wouldn’t have guessed Great Britain,” she says. It’s been a while since a British woman has made the radar of the American tennis fan.
Robson is 18, Li is 30; one is from the U.K., the other from China. But there are similarities between them as they begin their third-round match on an ominously warm and cloudless Friday—it’s noon, and the temperature is on the rise. Both women have had their shaky moments in the past, moments when they couldn’t close matches, moments when they let their nerves get the best of them, moments that ended in tears. Each has also recently hired a new, veteran coach—Li is working with Carlos Rodriguez, Justine Henin’s old mentor; Robson with Zeljko Krajan, who helped Dinara Safina reach No. 1. Robson says that Krajan’s “discipline” has already paid dividends, while Li, determined not to let negativity do her in anymore, has already won two big tournaments with Rodriguez.
There’s a noticeable difference in each of them. With Robson, it’s in her game itself. Every facet seems, suddenly, to be stronger, more certain. Her first serve is heavier. She takes the ball earlier with both of her ground strokes, and Li has no answer for her outstanding backhand return of serve. Some have doubted that Robson, a former world No. 1 junior, has the speed to stay with the pros; and for an athlete, she does lumber a bit when she walks. The answer to a lack of speed, as Monica Seles showed long ago, is to avoid having to run after the ball. Robson, who does her best to dictate against her hard-hitting opponent, knows this. “My game is based on being aggressive,” she says today. “If I don’t play that way, then I probably wouldn’t be doing very well.”
Robson plays very well today in upsetting Li. She appears to be going through the tennis equivalent of a growth spurt. This is how it goes—you work, you don’t get better; you work, you don’t get better; finally, you work and you really get better, fast. Unfortunately, it tends to happen only when you’re young.
When the match is over, Li gives Robson a no-look handshake and virtually sprints off the court. After her outstanding summer, when she seemed to be breaking some of her old habits, the loss is devastating.
“I was a little bit,” she says, with more dejection in her voice than in her words, “not so happy about today, that I play that way.”
Li hadn’t gotten overly negative during the match, but there had been tension in her arm, especially in her forehand, on important points. There’s nothing any coach can do about that.
“What did you say?”
Ernests Gulbis is arguing with someone in the crowd on Court 13. At one point, long ago, he had a lead in his match with American Steve Johnson. Now it’s gone. Now he’s testy. Like Robson and Li, Gulbis hired a new coach this year. He also got a haircut and changed his forehand. None of it has made much of a difference. He still struggles to make good on his talent, still has trouble closing matches, still, as he says, “chokes as usual.” Today Gulbis looks sharp through two sets. He also appears to be competing well. He wins the first set in a tiebreaker, and reaches 5-5 in a second-set breaker, two points from a two-set lead. But Gulbis loses that point. At 5-6, he tosses the ball to serve. As it leaves his hand, a loudspeaker from Ashe Stadium suddenly booms out its introduction for “Noooo-vak Djoooo-ko-vic!” Gulbis double faults. He loses the next two sets and the match. Sometimes, whatever you do with your hair, your forehand, or your coaching situation, fate remains firmly against you.
“That’s the advantage of being 6-foot-8, you can serve downward.”
This is how an insightful spectator describes Juan Martin del Potro’s serve, as the Argentine aces his opponent, Ryan Harrison. The man has given del Potro two extra inches, but his premise is a sound one: It helps to be tall when you serve.
Del Potro and Harrison are each wearing bright red shirts that shine in the withering early afternoon sun. But they don’t have much in common as players. Watching their rallies, Del Potro looks like the tank, and Harrison looks like the guy running around the tank trying to lob missiles into the hole at the top. He spends much of his time well behind the baseline as del Potro methodically works his way to the baseline. Harrison does everything he can—kick serves to move del Potro wide, slices to get him to bend low—but he fights a losing battle all afternoon. The biggest problem for Harrison is that he can’t find the corners with his ground strokes. He leaves them in the middle of the court, where the tank can blast them.
But all is not lost for Harrison. This is his first big event since he was chastised for smashing a racquet at the Olympics. He looks ready to go the same route a few times today, but he moves on to the next point. If Harrison takes a step back during the points, this element of the match us a step forward.
Early in the second set, del Potro takes a ball out of the air with his foot and kicks it right into a ball boy’s hands. The wife of the man who described him as being 6-foot-8 says, “Wow, pretty good.” Her husband isn’t all that impressed.
“Well, he is from Spain.”
“God, no.”
Brian Baker bangs his palm on his strings. The laid back Nashvillian is angrier than he ever was at the French Open or Wimbledon, when he was in the midst of his storybook return to the sport. Since then, the 27-year-old American has had a dose of ATP reality, as well as a dose of those irritating things called expectations. Coming to New York, Baker was 1-5 since Wimbledon. Now he’s playing the eighth seed, Janko Tipsarevic, on the Grandstand. It’s a court that you would think would be jumping with energy for the local kid whose life reads like a movie script. But it isn’t. The stands are half full, and Baker hasn’t given them much to cheer about.
That’s largely because Tipsarevic hasn’t let him. The Serb is the real revelation of the afternoon. From afar, his game can look dully solid and utilitarian; from closer in, you realize that he plays some serious, crackling, sonically explosive tennis. Tipsy packs a punch with his compact, muscular frame, and hits with what might be called a fearsome clean-ness, driving through each ball. Unlike Baker, he rarely shanks a shot or hits anything less than a penetrating drive. At one point Baker hits an excellent approach; no one, it seems as you watch it, could hit one any better. Tipsarevic takes the ball and tattoos a cross-court pass. A buzz circles the bleachers.
Baker learns a lesson that many of us have learned. You can work and make yourself the best you can be, the best in your neighborhood, the best, maybe, in your state; but there’s always going to be somebody better than you. You can do everything on a tennis court with exemplary consistency and precision, break all of your bad habits and live up to your potential. But at a certain level near the top, you need more. You need the God-given, the extraordinary. You need something that the rest of us <em>can’t</em> recognize.