Time is running out on my Wimbledon. That’s a bit of an understatement, to be honest. This is my last day here, but I didn’t want to have to come out and say it.
What have I not gotten enough of this week? Tennis matches, of all things. I kept unintentionally trapping myself in the pressroom, wracking my brain to find the very best way to describe a down-the-line backhand or a crosscourt forehand. “Drilled the ball,” “hammered the ball,” “smoked it”: What should it be?
Anyway, I vowed to make up for it today by getting out on the grounds and moving around as much as possible. Plus, it's Saturday. It's un-American not to get away from the office.
1:15: Court 3
Naturally, the first place I go I’m confronted with a bona fide story—so much for the rambling for the moment. I’m in my seat just behind the court here for all of five minutes and I’m pouring sweat. The humidity has been peaking here for a couple days without any breaks for rain. Jelena Jankovic looks suitably sluggish, so much so that her opponent, Melanie Oudin, a 17-year-old from Georgia (yes, the one in the U.S.), looks like she’s running circles around her.
Oudin is, in the parlance of the sportswriter, a prototypical “spark plug.” She’s strong and squat, 5-foot-6 on her tip-toes. She’s also a prototypical low-to the ground baseliner, with an extremely clean and reliable crosscourt two-handed backhand that she can also slap down the line for winners. Her forehand is more of a rally shot than a point-ending weapon; she uses something more conservative than a Western grip on it, which makes it hard for her to come over the ball. But give her something high and she extends through it smoothly.
Not surprisingly, Oudin’s serve is her weak spot. She doesn’t get up for it, settling for middling slices instead. Her strong point? On the evidence in front of me today, I’d say it’s her head: She’s patient, she’s smart, and, it goes without saying for a successful young woman player, she’s a fighter.
Oudin is willing to take a hand off the racquet and take pace off the ball with a backhand slice, even though it can float on her. She pushed that shot down the line and got it to bounce away from Jankovic’s forehand, a tricky shot to handle. The American has the hands to hit a very finely gauged drop shot with her backhand, and when she gets a forehand in the middle of the court, she can flatten it out for winners. Primarily, though, she’s a grind, and very patient, both in her shot selection and the way she stays with each ball rather than rushing her stroke when she’s going for something big.
The combination eventually left Jankovic bamboozled. Oudin could have won in straights—she had four set points in the first but lost it in a tiebreaker—but she never looked even remotely down on herself. Oudin always seemed to be thinking out there, and in the third set it all came together. She won going away, belting bigger and bigger down the line backhands even as she got closer to the most important win of her career.
The young WTA names to watch at the start of the week were Robson and Larcher de Brito. They’re long gone, while Oudin, an unheralded qualifier, is in the fourth round. She was a little incredulous about it herself in her press conference, which she attended wearing hoop earrings and a glittery headband. She was ready for prime time, and she answered all questions as directly as anyone could hope. Asked if she had blocked out the fact that she was playing at Wimbledon, Oudin jumped right in, American teen style:
“I mean, I go into every match the exact same, you know, like no matter who I play. It’s not like, Oh my gosh, I’m playing the No. 1 player in the world. It all depends on what game I play and what shots I hit and that stuff.”
Oudin’s goal for the tournament was to qualify, but doing that gave her a further confidence boost. She has a twin sister, Katherine, who plays junior tennis and who went to high school. Melanie was home schooled, and like all of us, made it her lifelong goal as a kid to become No. 1 in the world. Her grandmother was the tennis inspiration in the family.
Oudin (ew-DAN) is a French name, and a couple of the country’s journalists attended her press conference. Told that they were trying to claim her as one of their own, she burst out laughing.
“Yes, my last name is French. But I’m totally American for sure.”
We knew that, but it was still nice for a U.S. tennis writer to hear.
3:00: Court 1
The match of the tournament thus far has been Tommy Haas and Marin Cilic, which was suspended last night at 6-6 in the fifth. When play resumes, Haas comes out serving and volleying, which seems to be a smart tactic, a way of forcing himself to be aggressive in this shortened time period. It works to start, but when he serves for the match, he loses two points at the net. Now serving and volleying looks tactically reckless—what are you thinking, Tommy? Moral: It’s all in the execution. But Haas gathers himself to serve it out. The man who is on his fourth of fifth tennis career, and is enjoying a very belated renaissance, faces Igor Andreev next. After that, he’d have a shot at getting Novak Djokovic, whom he beat last week.
4:00: Court 4
Is there another American dream about to come true? Jesse Levine has won the first set over Stan Wawrinka and is up a break in the second, but the Swiss is in the process of finding his range. Everything turns in a second as Wawrinka asserts his more versatile shot-making. Levine has come down to earth, and he’s not happy about it. As I’m leaving, he spits at a spot on the grass where he thought he got a bad bounce. From Oudin’s joy to Levine’s bitter frustration, Wimbledon is nothing if not a living exhibit of emotional extremes.
5:00: Court 1
Sabine Lisicki hits a long and heavy ball, and she’s had Svetlana Kuznetsova on her heels and spraying balls wide all day. But when it comes time to serve it out, for a seemingly routine 6-2, 6-3 win, Lisicki double faults to start the game. She’s broken, and over the next few games she squanders four match points. When Kuznetsova sprays another one wide on the fifth and it’s finally over, Lisicki is overcome. She pulls her visor down over her eyes—she can’t believe what they see, a win over the French Open champion, the biggest of her career. Everywhere you go, there are people going to extremes around here.
6:00: Centre Court
Like Tim Henman's back in the day, an Andy Murray match here has started to seem like a world event. Murray, so normal and wiry and unprepossessing as he walks into a jammed Centre Court, looks like he could be crushed under the weight of the stadium and the invisible expectations that swirl through it.
Murray doesn’t crumble. Instead, he is quietly braced by the atmosphere in the building. He says, in his plain and understated monotone, that the home crowd “helps him focus on the important points.” The stadium doesn’t veer as wildly between joy and trepidation as it did with Henman, because Murray has been in total control of the situation over the first week.
As he did against Ernests Gulbis on Thursday, Murray jumps out to an early lead over Victor Troicki, which gives him the confidence to begin carving up the court with his various changes of pace. The defensive forehand slice has become a staple of his arsenal, and while it doesn’t look like much, it’s tough to hit it past Murray, who can guard the entire baseline from his position of deep retreat.
The match is over in a hurry, but watching Murray hit a vicious side spinning backhand and follow it to net for a touch volley, I find time to ask: Is he the first player with a two-handed backhand to play like he has a one-hander? One thing I do know: The guy has grown up fast.
!Roof 8:00: Centre Court
The roof has been closed as I’ve been speaking here, though no one is playing. It’s beautiful at first sight, and there's a sense of fun among the fans who stay and take photos of each other in what appears to everyone to be a brand new arena. Its historical and seemingly God-given atmosphere has been completely altered with one cosmetic change. “Is this Wimbledon?” is the question in everyone’s eyes.
The surface is brighter under the lights than it is much of the time under clouds, and the roof is held by triangular girders that descend surprisingly low. Knowing Wimbledon’s thoroughness, I can only assume they’re elevated enough to allow for a toweringly high desperation lob. You can take the rain out of tennis, but not the desperation.
What else will be lost with the roof? The sky, the clouds, the sun, a connection with something larger than life, which Centre Court in its old form, its form before today, seemed to be a part of. The old open overhang didn’t have the power to blot out the sky, but it did have the power to frame it. Maybe the best thing about the new roof is that we’ll appreciate even more the way Centre Court looks when it’s not there.