July 30, 2011
Recently, my life has taken a turn for the busy. No longer do I have the luxury of planning my study schedule around the order of play of the French open, nor do I have the permanent impression of my rear in my couch from watching Wimbledon 24-hours-a-day. The current stage of my life requires, above all, attendance, which has put a serious dent in my ability to keep up with the goings-on of the ATP and WTA.
Imagine my delight when the first moment I have to watch a full match on TV is a Friday night showdown between Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. The tennis gods must have a soft spot for me. I had looked forward to this match all day, forcing a Red Bull into my belly just so I didn’t get the sleepys before the match aired at 11pm.
It’s so fun to watch these two play because they both play a mind game with you without really trying. For the most part, they don’t engage in overt gamesmanship, they don’t call their coaches out onto court every chance they get (I’m lookin’ at you Caroline), and they don’t engage in any false pleasantries or animosities on the court. They get into their opponents’ heads just by playing like machines that are cranked up to “laser strength.”
It’s also important to realize that we generally consider both Serena and Maria to be “veterans” of the tour. They both have multiple versions of themselves that tend to come out occasionally and take us fans back to another time. With Maria there is Vintage Maria, the teenager who won Wimbledon and the US Open on her way to winning the 2008 Australian Open just before her shoulder woes. There is Classic Maria, the just-back-from-injury Maria whose frequency of double faults had all the makings of a good drinking game, and finally Comeback Maria, the one who won a tournament on clay this year on her way to making it to the Wimbledon Final.
Serena is similarly a player who seems to have 9 lives, and her cat-like reflexes don’t do anything to diminish that statement. We’ve seen her rise and fall like the tides of the Pacific Coast through injuries, inconsistencies, and indifferences, but now that we are in the full swing of Comeback Serena v2.0 it’s no longer surprising to hear that she is once again the player to beat.
Last night, I had hoped to see a clash between Comeback Maria and Comeback Serena v2.0, but alas the tennis gods have a sense of humor and decided to play a cruel prank on me instead. Comeback Serena v2.0 was there, but her unfortunate opponent was Classic Maria, who sent so many botched forehands into the stands, she may as well have declared war on them for all of those airstrikes. Serena was like a laser, hitting aces that seemed out of a superhero comic book and returns that make you rub your eyes in an exaggerated motion as if you were in a Looney Toons cartoon and say to yourself “bwaaaaahhhh!???!?”
For all the work that Maria has put in over the past year and a half, it seemed that she was about to reach another peak in her career. Last night, however, she looked as if she were back at square one. There is something about Serena that gets into your head, even if its walls are made of lead like Maria’s. It’s a presence you can’t teach, one that comes with knowing you’re the best and wanting to be perfect every time you step onto the court. That’s what makes Serena, well Serena.
With every double fault and wild forehand, after watching winners fly past her ears, Maria was in quite a state. Losing the first set 6-1, it was hard to see how she would be able to pull it out from there, but if anyone could do it, it’s Maria. We’ve seen her through this type of situation before, right? Sure, that second set was much more respectable, offering fleeting glimpses of the Friday Night Lights we were expecting, but Serena was just too good. It was her best of times, and unfortunately, it was one of Maria’s worst.
Resources : http://www.10sballs.com/
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