Australia Day is like our Fourth of July, complete with parades, fireworks and way way too much drinking. And it’s today in Australia. Vera Zvonareva and Petra Kvitova were in the second set of their quarterfinal match on Rod Laver when the noontime twenty one gun salute announced itself. They buzz the roof of Rod Laver, not once, but a few times, and it is loud and a little scary. As if that wasn’t enough distraction, just ten minutes earlier a woman either injured herself or became ill a few rows behind where Kvitova was playing, a true visual and emotional diversion from the tennis, more so for Vera who could see it. It threw things off for a little while, but Vera, she of the famous meltdowns as recently as a year ago, is now a consummate professional. She had won the first set and had been up 3-0 in the second but was in danger of possibly losing the set when Petra caught up and the score was 5-4, Kvitova serving. Vera broke her to win the match. On to the semifinals for the third time in Grand Slams in the past year.
On the men’s side, yesterday, Roger Federer did to Stan Wawrinka what Wawrinka had done to Andy Roddick two nights before. He gave him a comprehensive beatdown. Now it was Stan ten feet behind the baseline, fighting for his life, looking like an amateur. How is it possible, you wonder, that things are so different depending. But that is tennis. Andy had nothing to threaten Stan Wawrinka and then Stan had nothing to bother Roger. Each player has his or her strengths and weaknesses and those match up in certain ways with other players and their strengths and weaknesses.
And if you had any doubt that the women’s game is anyone’s game, the only player who was in last year’s quarters and this year’s is Li Na of China. My own pre-match racket bracket picks were only fifty percent correct for the last eight women. I’m doing better with the men where I got six of eight.
There had been much talk about the Djokovic/Berdych match being a five set thriller, but it wasn’t. Novak just outran and outdefended and outdid everything that Thomas could put out there. And he won it in straights, 6-1, 7-6, 6-1.
The beauty of a match these past two days turned out to be, not surprisingly, the quarterfinal encounter between Caroline Wozniacki and Francesca Schiavone, last night. Everyone thought Francesca couldn’t possibly have anything left to give after her four hour forty four minute marathon match against Kuznetsova. But they were wrong. Francesca won the first set and was up in the second before Caroline came to. Where was she? In the press room, giving guff, or over on the cricket field learning the game? Who knows? She wasn’t on Rod Laver for awhile. Unsettled, fussing with the tape on her leg. But then she did click in and that burst of energy met up with some of Francesca’s fatigue; it went three sets, with Wozniacki winning.
But Francesca was no loser. It was beyond amazing that she played the match she did after what she had been through. In the press conference after the Kuznetsova match, she just showed more of what you love about her. When asked if she would be able to play again in two days after the marathon, she said she is young, she can run, she can do anything. Was she aware of the time they had been on the court? She said, yes, I was looking at the clock and I say, brava Frankie, you are strong! Players get asked all the time about their internal process, what they were thinking, but most of the time you get pro forma answers. Francesca actually gives us a real glimpse in her refreshingly honest and unscripted way. She said she works for these things and when you do something like this, you feel big. She’s an inspiration to every player. At thirty, old in tennis terms, she’s having her greatest success. After years as a journeyman player, she has become a real star. Brava.
Kim Clijsters won her match over Aggie Radwanska of Poland in straights, but it was more of a contest than that indicates. Kim won the first set 6-3 and should have put the second to bed much sooner than she did. She kind of went away mentally, Kim has these periods in her matches, and let Aggie hang around until the set needed a tiebreak to settle it. Kim has yet to play her very best tennis but she’s got one more match, against Zvonareva, to get to the final and she’ll need it to win.
Our four semifinalists are Wozniacki and Na Li, Kim and Vera. It really is any one of these women’s game still, and both the semis and the final, whoever is in it, should be good contests. Kim is the only one of the four who is a Grand Slam winner, though she has not yet won the Australian Open. And as Kim would be the first to tell you, it took her about a half dozen tries before she finally closed the deal and hoisted the trophy at the end of one of these majors. You have to win seven matches against all sorts of opponents, on all different surfaces and courts, in all manner of weather and conditions, staying in all kinds of hotels and apartments, eating different food, drinking new water. It is not easy. So even when you make a deep run at these events, you feel, as Frankie told us, “big”. And if you are the last woman standing, the victor, you would feel huge. If Caroline or Vera or Li Na win their first Grand Slam this weekend, they will feel big indeed.
Tennis is about the game and it’s about the players and all the human dramas and stories. It’s about the different countries they come from and where they compete. And it’s about the fans without whom it would be the tennis version of one hand clapping. All of that combines in ways both predictable and surprising and often compelling.
As it did last night on Rod Laver Arena as Rafa Nadal and David Ferrer took the court before a packed house. Rafa, just three matches away from a career Grand Slam, ownership of all four trophies in one year, he won the French, Wimbledon and the US Open in 2010. He was feeling better from his virus, did well against Cilic, didn’t sweat like crazy as he had been. Feeling good, Rafa should be able to beat his friend and fellow countryman, David Ferrer, even though their head to head is 3-2, I believe. Never count Ferrer out, that’s for sure. If Francesca Schiavone is La Lionessa, David is and has always been The BullDog. He’s a grinder, he’s fast, he’s a shotmaker and he goes first ball to last with the same intensity, very much like Rafa in this way.
Early in the first set, at 2-1 Ferrer, after a long game when Rafa first served, in which he was broken, he called for the trainer and left the court for a medical time-out. No one knew what was up. Sometimes you can see on court when a player has suffered an injury, they turn their ankle in the wrong way, they pull up in pain from a shot, but last night something happened to Rafa that wasn’t as clear as that, and it still isn’t. He came back to the court, prepared to play, and after a few games it looked like maybe he was going to be able to work through it, but he never really did. Was it the thigh, the hamstring? He didn’t retire, something he did exactly one year ago, on Australia Day, against Murray. He played the match, but Ferrer, who excecuted his game plan to perfection against a wounded Rafa, was the victor in straight sets.
It was a huge disappointment to everyone. The purists, like Bud Collins, will say it’s not a Slam unless you win all four in the same calendar year. Rod Laver did it not once but twice. But anyway you cut it, to hold all four in sequence is an achievement few attain and Rafa’s hopes for that, and all who love him and his game and his spirit, were completely dashed last night. In his press conference after the match, he asked not to speak about the injury, mostly because he didn’t know what it was, but also, greatly, because he wanted to focus on the match that got played and how well Ferrer had competed. He does not want to be the guy who only loses because he has an injury, and he does not want to be the player who retires and deprives his opponents of a win they earned. Rafa accepts that you go out on the court as you are on the day and you compete and you either win or you lose, and then you come back the next day and the next and do it all over again. He doesn’t want sympathy, he doesn’t make excuses.
In the middle of the match, there was a break, as there always is, for the fireworks display. You can see them from inside Rod Laver and last year when I was there I watched them outside of the tennis park, at the edge of the river downtown. They put on a good show, that’s for sure.
So last night all of it combined, the drama, the high stakes, the game and its history and its present and future, the players and their humanity and aspirations, the country and its traditions and proud history, the fans and their fervor. At the ESPN desk, now with its own Australia Day traditions, there were vegemite sandwiches (disgusting stuff) and meat pies, and lizards and wombats or whatever prickly creature that was. Only Aussie Darren Cahill could stomach the vegemite, Brad Gilbert went walkabout when the animals started licking Darren’s jacket, Vera Zvonareva tried the vegemite and held the animals.
It didn’t turn out as expected. It was great.
Happy Australia Day!
