More people globally know that Maria Sharapova won a tennis
match against Laura Robson that included a combined 15 double
faults than know that Sloane Stephens won a match against Michelle
Larcher de Brito in which there were some crucial doubles too, but
nowhere near as many. Although the matches were played on the same
day, Tuesday, they were in different time zones, one of which is
receiving more media attention. This is why the Sharapova-Robson
event was known to have happened sooner and by more news consumers
than the Stephens-Larcher de Briton one. The score was broadcast
far and wide, and as you probably know due to the unbalance in the
coverage of sporting events during this fortnight, it was kind of
close, so you have to at least grant Laura Robson credit for grits
and guts, English qualities par excellence in days of yore. At 19
she is just out of childhood and she was up against the ice queen
who is all of 24.
On the same day Sloane Stephens overwhelmed Michelle Larcher de
Brito by scores of 6-2, 0-6, 6-1, which is to say she was
overwhelming in the first and third sets but was herself
overwhelmed in the second. Miss Larcher stomped her feet, pouted,
complained to the ump about a call, banged her racquet on the
floor, got a new one (and played very well with it for a few
points, which proves something), frowned, scowled, shook her head,
and lost. If she had played the third set — or the first, for that
matter — the way she played that second one, boy, she would have
been happy. She could not err. She could not be touched. She was
superb. She was calm and crafty and classy all at once. She was
playing Russian lady tennis, the deep hard baseline game, complete
with the two handed power backhand and the shriek. Blonde hair and
all, she even looks kind of Russian, though at five and a half feet
she does not have the height of the haughty ice queen.
(CORRECTION ALERT: I guessed they were light, but can I be sure
I saw accurately? Eyewitness reports are often surprisingly
inaccurate. Yesterday I reported that the Argentine champ Leonardo
Mayer has a mop of curly hair and today, when I met him — I wanted
to ask him about the pampas but decided it was not sporting to
distract him from the doubles match he was about to play, so I
muttered a banality about Washington’s great weather and how happy
we were to host athletes from around the world at the William H. G.
FitzGerald Tennis Center on 16th St., N.W. — I realized he has not
a curl on his head. The perspiration, the head band, the way he
tosses his head when he serves conspired to play a trick on my
perception. The doors of imagination were opened, but I was
mistaken about his hair. He wears his hair sort of like Novak
Djokovic, if you want to know, in that Euro-crew cut style that
differs markedly from ours, wherein we get the quarter inch to
stand up straight, whereas they wear it flat and when it is wet
with perspiration it looks like flying curls, at least that is my
excuse.)
However, the hitch was that Miss Larcher had goofed up the first
set, unable to find a rhythm against the American who is her
near-exact contemporary, and then she somehow completely flopped in
the third, losing her concentration and throwing tantrums. Whereas
Miss Sloane, who lives in Florida — as do Miss Larcher and Miss
Sharapova, despite, or perhaps because of, their Lusitanian and
Siberian origins — stayed fantastically poised and cool,
notwithstanding the humiliation of that second set thrashing. She
came right back with a superb game plan, change-ups and
cross-courts and keeping the ball in play during long points and
betting that her nerves would hold out the longer. She was superbly
efficient. She was one gritty girl.
The No. 1 seed on the ladies’ draw at the Citi Open, Anastasia
Pavlyuchenkova, played a steady match in cruising past Bojana
Jovanovski a few hours before the clash between the Misses Stephens
and Larcher de Brito. If all goes according to plan, she should
meet one of the hopes of the young American generation, Vania King,
or even another of the American hopes, Coco Vandeweghe. If Miss
Stephens stays on her steady pace and overwhelms Olga Govortsova in
her next match, she will — but why speculate.
Professional tennis, as a popular spectator sport and a
business, has evolved, as has major league baseball, since the
inception of the open era in the late 1960s, and it appears the
most visible current trend is to combine the women’s and men’s
tours, whose structures are the WTA and ATP. The tendency is toward
tournaments combining events of both tours, as well as toward
greater equality in prize money. What this suggests is that women’s
and men’s tennis attract comparable — maybe even overlapping? —
numbers of fans. It was the case the other day that there were more
spectators at the Stephens-Larcher match than at any of the others,
even young Leonardo (no curls) Mayer’s doubles, which in fact was
rather unobserved, a pity because he and a (North) American, James
Cerratani, were edged by two other Americans, Drew Courtney and
Steve Johnson, in a thriller that went to the tiebreak edge in both
sets.
Since most players at these events compete in both doubles and
singles draws, not rarely on the same day, the scoring system was
modified to allow for the physical strain of the game. Some years
ago men’s singles matches were changed from best-of-five to
best-of-three (same as the women’s singles), and more recently the
third set, if needed, in a doubles match is a tiebreak to seven
points, with more as needed to win by two. James Blake and Tim
Smyczek (American veteran and American hope, respectively) won a
great one the other day, 10-8, with net rallies worthy of a fencing
match. They played deep into the night, even as Miss Sloane and
Miss Michelle were deep into their battle of wills and minds: as
that is what it finally came down to, with their respective
strengths, all other things being equal — but they never are —
evenly matched.
The American women, in fact, are doing well in the doubles draw,
with Chanelle Scheepers and Irina Falconi already in the third
round and several other teams advancing. Miss Stephens, playing
with a Russian young lady, Anna Chakvetadze, will meet the superb
Czech sister team of Karolina and Kristyna Pliskova either
Wednesday night or Thursday. American women are a riddle unto
themselves, but when they get into high motivation mode, they can
be stubborn.
That is one factor that goes into making a gritty girl, and the
other is the ability to, as we say, step on the gas and get there.
Tennis-wise, this occurs when they are losing as well as when they
are winning. It took grit for Miss Stephens to collect her wits,
return to her best moves, and regain the initiative after losing
that second set without getting a single game. There were displays
of grit and not-grit Wednesday evening. Americans Vania King and
Irina Falconi battled though a nervous and error prone end-game
(end match, rather), with Miss King finally keeping the edge on the
last point of a tie-break. Coco Vandeweghe was gritty in her
consistency, while her French opponent Aravane Rezaï showed
non-grit, a.k.a. frustration, double-faulting to end the match. And
there was a terrific battle of grit between Anastasia
Pavlyuchenkova, a well-endowed young Russian with a killer serve
and no fear of hitting deep and risky ground strokes, and a little
known Hungarian, impressively aristocratic in her bearing, Melinda
Czink — of whom we can expect much in tournaments to come — whose
elegant grit finally failed against Anastasia’s skill and
power.
There are in sum quite a lot of relatively untested players this
year at the 16th Street Tournament, formally the Citi Open not the
Corona Invitational.
(SECOND CORRECTION ALERT: An earlier dispatch noted the presence
of Corona-logoed polo shirt-wearing grounds staff. This is not
inaccurate as far as it goes, since the individuals thus described
have their feet on the ground. But specifically, they are umpires,
not the equally crucial caretakers of the courts and the grounds,
which on the whole are, in fact, rather close to immaculate —
which is more than a few players evidently think of the umpiring —
and well protected when the thunderstorms, which must be taken for
granted on 16th St. NW in summer, burst and hold things up for a
spell. That the rule of (tennis) law should become a marketing
platform for a producer and distributor of alcoholic beverages
seems apt, when you think of the deluge of rules and regulations
pouring relentlessly just a mile or two down the street from
here.)
And that is one of the event’s charms. Many tennis fans, no
doubt, are mesmerized by the unstoppable march of America’s
greatest and grittiest player (on the women’s side) in that other
time zone, as she advances to the quarterfinals in the London
sports extravaganza. But watching these less experienced young
ladies in the closer, more intimate setting of the Rock Creek
Tennis Center (THIRD AND FINAL CORRECTION ALERT: We will check with
tournament officials for the official and correct designation for
this 16th St.-Rock Creek-William H. G. FitzGerald Tennis
Center-Citi Open event) allows the admirer of the sport to combine
the laid-back pleasure of a summer evening on a grandstand with the
satisfaction of seeing how and by whom and in what conditions the
game is played today. - #
