Nerves, wind and at last Serena

By Art Spander

NEW YORK — They battled nerves, wind and the oh-so-brilliant lady across the net. They went from day into night, from advantage to disadvantage. They produced one of the longest and most tense U.S. Open women’s tennis championship matches ever.
  
In the end, as expected — and for the enthralled, hollering capacity crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium, as hoped — it was Serena Williams, surviving both herself and the irrepressible Victoria Azarenka, winning 7-5, 6-7 (6), 6-1.
  
This was one of the best, if not once of the classics. This was a 2-hour 45-minute struggle both against a south wind that swirled viciously around the 24,000-seat bowl and great shots from the opponent.
   
Williams, No. 1 in the rankings and the seedings, seemed more flummoxed by the weather than Azarenka, who is one notch down in both categories, as tennis skirts flapped and serves took flight.
   
But at last, the veteran, the American, Serena, who will be 32 in two weeks, took the American title for a second straight year and a fifth time overall, and joyfully bounced about the court in triumph.
   
Serena seemed well on her way to the championship, her 17th Grand Slam, with a 4-1 lead and up two breaks in the second set. But suddenly her big serves started coming back at her on terrific returns by Azarenka, who was dashing from corner to corner and ripping balls in every unreturnable direction.
     
“Yeah, I think I got a little uptight, which probably wasn't the best thing at that moment,” confided Williams.
    
She also pointed out that her problems were caused in part by Azarenka.
    
“Vika is such a great fighter,” Williams said, using the nickname by which everyone calls the 24-year-old from Belarus.
   
“That’s why she was able to win multiple Grand Slams,” she added, in a bit of exaggeration, Azarenka having taken the Australian Open twice — including this January but no other majors.
   
For Serena, it was her second Slam of 2013, after a win in the French Open. Two days earlier, John McEnroe, commenting for television, called Williams the greatest women’s player ever, and surely this match did nothing to change his viewpoint. Or anyone else’s.
   
Indeed, although she had not lost a set until the final, the reality is that the farther one advances in a tournament the tougher it becomes. And especially in women’s tennis, beyond the top half-dozen players, there aren’t many who are in the class of Serena or Vika.
  
“Well, there's one word,” said Azarenka afterward. “She's a champion, and she knows how to repeat that. She knows what it takes to get there. I know that feeling, too. And when two people who want that feeling so bad meet, it's like a clash. That's what happens out there, those battles.
         
“And in the important moments is who is more brave, who is more consistent, or who takes more risk. And with somebody like Serena, you got to take risk. You can never play safe, because she will do that. She did that today really well.”
  
Just the edge. Serena had it, then Serena lost it, or more accurately Azarenka, who beat Williams a month ago at Cincinnati in three sets, wrenched it away. But not for long.
 
“I started to try to — I wasn't playing very smart tennis then,” Serena said of the second set, “so I just had to relax and not do that again. This was never over until match point.”
    
Technically, yes, although once she regained control by breaking serve in the fourth game of the third set, the result was inevitable.
   
“Vika, you played unbelievable,” said Serena, who at times can be self-centered. “It was an honor to play against you.”  
   
The disappointment welled up in Azarenka when the chance for an upset, very real at the start of the third set, disappeared.
    
“It is a tough loss,” said Azarenka, doing her best to hold back her emotions, “but to be in final against best player, I showed heart.”
    
Then, in front of the microphone that carried her words over the public address system. Azarenka began to cry, trying to hide her tears behind an available towel.
  
“I think it was raising, you know, from the first point the tension, the battle, the determination, it was raising really, you know, kind of like boiling the water or something.
 
“She (Serena) really made it happen. In that particular moment she was tougher today. She was more consistent, and, you know, she deserved to win. I wish I could do something better today. You know, I felt like I had opportunities in the first set, as well. But, I mean, it's okay. It goes that way. I did everything I could."
   
Serena did everything she needed, as usually has been the case the past year. Since a first-round loss in the 2012 French Open. Williams is 98-5 with 14 tournament wins. This year, she is 67-4.
   
“I felt almost disappointed with my year, to be honest,” explained Williams when asked if she needed the win to a validate her domination.
    
“I felt like, yeah, I won the French Open, but I wasn't happy with my performances in the other two slams, and, you know, not even making it to the quarterfinals of one. So I definitely feel a lot better with at least a second Grand Slam under my belt this year."
   
Especially the way the wind blew and Azarenka played.

McEnroe calls Serena “greatest of all time”

By Art Spander

NEW YORK — The tournament isn’t over yet for Serena Williams, or certainly, the woman she’ll again face in the finals of the U.S. Open. The way everyone’s talking, it might as well be.
  
Not that Serena is going to win, because even favorites — and certainly she’s the favorite — lose every now and then.
   
But Serena’s real competition is not the player across the net but the history of the game.
  
The lady Williams is to play in the Sunday final, the one nicknamed Vika, Victoria Azarenka of Belarus, declared without reservation that Serena is the “greatest of all time.”
   
Strong words, which could be interpreted as a setup, but Vika isn’t one to be disingenuous.
   
Besides, the idea is shared by one of tennis’ greats, John McEnroe, who Friday, after Serena routed Li Na, 6-0, 6-3, in one semifinal, said, “I know she doesn’t have the amount of wins of Chris (Evert) or Martina (Navratilova) or Steffi (Graf), but I already think she’s the greatest.”
   
So far for Williams, this Open has been less about success than about verification. The question in any of her six matches hasn’t been whether Serena would win but how easily she would win. Again on a warm, breezy afternoon in Queens, we learned.
   
The afternoon began with Azarenka, the 24-year-old from Belarus, who’s got a wonderful forehand and a no-less impressive sense of humor. Seeded No. 2 — behind Williams, naturally — Azarenka defeated Flavia Pennetta of Italy, 6-4, 6-2.
   
That gave her time first to watch Williams, 31, extend her streak of consecutive game wins to 24, as Serena won the first seven games of the match, and contemplate what might be done to reverse last year’s final. In 2012, Vika, then the top seed, lost to Williams in three sets.
  
Serena has pitched shutouts in five of the 12 sets she played this Open, meaning 6-0 wins in those sets, and not only hasn’t lost a set but has lost only 16 points. The record for a full tournament for fewest points allowed is 19 by Navratilova in 1983.
  
The question is how to get the 31-year-old Williams out of the comfort zone she now occupies, and Azarenka had a ready answer. “You’ve got to fight,” she began. “You’ve got to run. You’ve got to grind, and you’ve got to bite with your teeth for whatever opportunity you have.”
  
That’s a figure of speech, of course, Azarenka not planning to emulate Mike Tyson with her bicuspids.
  
Azarenka has beaten Williams two out of the last three times they met, including a couple of weeks back in Cincinnati, but overall Serena has won 12 of 15 matches between the two. And with Williams overall 66-4 this year, it would be redundant to point out she’s on a roll.
  
Li Na is now 1-9 against Williams after Friday, and she appeared shellshocked for quite a while, finally regaining a bit of respectability.
 
“In the end, finally,” Li said, “I can play tennis.”
  
Not as well as Serena, who with the French Open among her eight tournament titles this year, has won 16 Grand Slams, including four U.S. Opens.
    
The 24,000-seat Arthur Ashe Stadium was maybe only two-thirds full on a languid Friday. Those in the stands had come to see, and to support, Williams, the only American still playing for the tennis championship of America.
  
“It’s great to hear, ‘Go Serena, Go Serena,’” said Williams in a post-match TV interview also carried on the public address system. That brought a few chants of “Go Serena.”
   
“It’s really a pleasure to be here. Older voices, young voices.”
   
Williams, after the first-set blitz, in 30 minutes, surprisingly was down 2 games to 1 and, with Li serving, 40-0 in the fourth game. But Serena rallied, broke serve and regained what little control that had been lost.
 
“It was tough at the end,” said Williams. “Li Na is such a great player. I got a little nervous, but I was able to close it out.”
  
Then after a break, she and older sister Venus played doubles.
  
Azarenka simply went out for dinner.
  
“It’s important to have self-belief and confidence in what you do and just be aware of what’s going on, what’s coming at you,” Azarenka explained about her strategy for Williams.
  
What’s coming at Vika will be some of Serena’s 115-mph serves.
  
“It’s always a new story,” said Azarenka, alluding to last year’s loss to Serena in the final. “I don’t think it’s even going to be close to the same as it was last year.”
   
When you’re about to face the player you’ve labeled the greatest of all time, that’s an interesting observation.

Serena a winner over the “heir apparent”

By Art Spander  

NEW YORK — Oh, the the things that took place after Sloane Stephens, the designated “heir apparent” to Serena Williams, beat a semi-injured Williams in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open in January.

Stephens, 19 at the time — she’s now 20 — once had a poster of Serena in her room but allowed, in one of those moments when elation blurs logic, “I think I’ll put a poster of myself now.”
    
Then a month or so later, Stephens bemoaned the fallout, saying Serena unfollowed her on Twitter and that in truth Serena had in “the first 16 years of my life never said one word to me.”
  
What Serena said to Sloane Sunday, after their fourth-round match in the U.S, Open ended with Williams, having won the final five games and verifying her status with a 6-4, 6-1 victory, was “Good job.”
   
What Stephens said was, “I mean, obviously, she’s No. 1 in the world for a reason.” Obviously.

Serena will be 32 at the end of September, ancient for an athlete in a sport where there always seems to be another teenage phenom coming along. From Serbia or Spain or Russia.
  
Which is why so much — too much? — was made of Serena and Sloane, two women who, if not actually the rivals some journalists choose to call them, at least both are Americans.
   
You know, mom, apple pie and forehands. Also, alluding to that match eight months ago, revenge.
    
There was a misplaced assumption that, perhaps because they both are African-American, Serena had become Stephens’ mentor, as well as her bosom buddy. But tennis players, as golfers, do not become friendly with the people they are trying to pummel until retirement.
   
Arnie and Jack were competitors. Pete and Andre were competitors. Serena and Sloane are competitors.
 
“I think it was a high-quality match,” said Williams, and it was until it wasn’t.
  
Stephens isn’t in Serena’s class yet. She hung in for a while, which is what happens so often, but Williams won the big points in the first set and then won most of the points. Stephens was beaten mentally as well as physically.
  
“The second set got away from me a little bit,” confirmed Stephens. “I thought she did a lot of things well.”
   
Women’s tennis is dominated by very few, mainly Serena, Victoria Azarenka and Agnieszka Radwanska, and Radwanska has never won a Grand Slam tournament. Stephens is 15th in the rankings. “But I have a chance to break the top 10 at the end of the year,” she said.

She didn’t have much of a chance against Serena, even though it was 4-4 in the first set. The crowd, which didn’t quite fill 23,000-seat Arthur Ashe Stadium, seemed to favor Williams if marginally at the start. What it wanted most was a close match, and for about 45 minutes that’s what it got. Then, wham.

“I think she had some bomb first serves,” Stephens said of Williams, who broke her in the fourth game of the second set. “I lose serve. That kind of threw me off. I think having Serena serve up 3-1 is not ideal. When you give her that opportunity, to take that step forward, she definitely takes it.”
   
Williams has won the Open four times and, with the win over Stephens, advanced to the quarters 11 times in 14 appearances. Overall, of course, she has 16 Grand Slam titles, the most recent at the French Open in the beginning of June.
  
“I just tried to do what I wanted to do,” said Williams. If that was confusing, her game was not. She pounded serves, chased down balls on the lines and never reduced the pressure.
  
“Maybe one day when she’s not playing,” said a hopeful Stephens when asked about being on the same side of the draw as Serena, “people maybe would say, ‘I wish I wasn’t on the same side as Sloane.’
  
“Things happen in their time. It’s an honor to play on the court with one of the greatest tennis players of all time.”
  
That player was relentless.
  
“I’ve been at this a long time,” answered Serena about a possible letdown in her next match, against Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain. “So for me, in my career, there are no letdowns.
   
“I don’t go out there thinking about being a star. I just want to play tennis, and I want to do really good at it. It’s not about the stage for me. It’s just about getting the ball in.”
  
She got it in against Sloane Stephens as much as needed.

Newsday (N.Y.): Serena Williams stunned by Sabine Lisicki at Wimbledon

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

WIMBLEDON, England — The winner, the stunning winner, was in tears. The loser in a state of acceptance.

"It's not a shock," Serena Williams insisted after she, and all of tennis, indeed were shocked Monday by Sabine Lisicki's 6-2, 1-6, 6-4 victory.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Serena, Novak still around as Wimbledon begins second week

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

WIMBLEDON, England — There's a guy who once hit himself on the head so hard with a racket he drew blood. There's a young Englishwoman who's being treated as the Queen.

And, of course, there are top seeds, who despite so much chaos the first week of Wimbledon 2013, remain as perfect as they are supposed to be.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.