Whatever Works

INDIAN WELLS, CALIF.—If you could just make Petra Kvitova and Christina McHale into one tennis player . . .

That’s the thought that ran through my head every now and then as these two women went back and forth and up and down—well, one player went back and forth and up and down while the other held absolutely steady—over the course of three sets today at Indian Wells. It wasn’t just that Kvitova’s form swung so wildly; it’s a pretty good bet to do that in any match. It was that her strokes seemed to lack exactly what McHale’s had—polish. And the same was true, from the opposite direction, for Christina. Her strokes were smooth where Kvitova’s were raw, but the Czech’s had all the power.

It’s been a common theme on the WTA tour in recent the years. The players who win the majors are from the Kvitova mold. In the biggest matches and moments, they can take matters into their own hands and drive the ball past their opponents. But those players also tend to be erratic, while the women who win week in, week out tend to be in the McHale-Caroline Wozniacki, slow-and-steady-wins-the-race mold. The closest we’ve seen to a fusing of the two has been Victoria Azarenka over the course of her 19-match win streak this season.

Kvitova’s power game has been the better bet thus far. It’s brought her a Wimbledon title and a career-high No. 2 ranking, while McHale, who is two years younger at 19, is still climbing toward the Top 30. She called her 2-6, 6-2, 6-3 win today, “definitely one of the biggest of my career,” and it must rank very close to her upset of Wozniacki last summer in Cincinnati. The underpowered McHale did it the way she had to do it, by staying solid, making balls, and waiting for Kvitova to miss. But there were signs today that she can do more than win as a wallboard.

McHale's serve, which she has focused on intensively in recent months, was as effective as I’ve ever seen it. On important points, she repeatedly clocked it at 111-, 112-, 113-m.p.h., and she mixed the flat one down the T with a clever, and much slower, slider out wide into the deuce court. The combination was impressive to the point of amazing, coming from someone who is 5-foot-7, 127 pounds. So much for Big Babe tennis; with the right service motion, a little babe can fire a missile just as fast. It was McHale’s serve, as much as anything else, that began to shift the tide at the start of the second set. After being hit off the court in the first, she steadied herself by getting some free points with her first delivery.

As for Kvitova, she remains . . . Kvitova. (It's probably not a great sign when you reach that type of designation, like, say, baseball's Manny Ramirez.) She's prone to brilliance, as well as a sudden and total swerve out of brilliance, at any moment. As usual today, she took it all with a smile in her press conference. She credited McHale for being solid, but said that she had “lost energy” as the match wore on. It showed; Kvitova rarely broke 100-m.p.h. on her serve over the last two sets, and she double-faulted twice to be broken at 3-4 in the third. She said she had been sick two weeks ago and on antibiotics, but that it had nothing to do with the stomach flu that has been swirling through these parts recently. The bottom line is that Kvitova’s strokes remain long and sometimes late, flat, risky, low percentage, jaw-droppingly good when they go in, and head-shakingly ugly when they don’t. She doesn’t give herself a chance for anything in between.

That’s where McHale lives—in the in-between. The diehard Yankees fan defends the baseline like a catcher or a hockey goalie, by facing parallel to the net and punching back. Today she kept the ball deep, weathered the early Kvitova storm—McHale said she didn’t know what hit her in the first set—and even grew confident enough to begin to dictate late in the third.

Afterward, the shy, even-keel McHale didn’t want to speculate about her future; she’ll “take it one match at a time,” thank you very much. But she did allow herself one moment to strut today. Up 5-3 and 40-0 in the third, with three match points, the percentage player’s percentage player ended a long rally by floating a cocky drop shot from behind the baseline and into a wide open front court, where it kicked elegantly away from a stunned Kvitova.

McHale, who moves on to play Angelique Kerber and moves, slow and steady, up to No. 31 in the world, said the idea just popped into her head during the rally. She sounded a little sheepish about it later.

“After I was thinking, I mean, ‘What was I thinking doing a drop shot on that point?' But it worked.”

She hasn’t blasted in from nowhere, nor has she made a major splash on the national stage, but from fast serves to crazy drop shots, things seem to be working for Christina McHale.