Opinion Never on a Saturday
The uninspiring prospect of another womens final at Wimbledon.
It was a sluggish start for womens tennis in my world. My mother went into labour that first Sunday of July 1985,threatening to call my sibling Boris,should it be a boy. Perhaps it was just a ploy to distract four-year-old me,but it served as a momentous initiation into tennis and all of sport. The Wimbledon mens singles final has never needed a hardsell since.
In the past decade,try as I might,the womens final and womens tennis in general has failed to set the pulse racing.
Even though Venus Williams chases her sixth title this year,and sister Serena has opened the early,teary floodgates with her emotional return to the sport after a life-threatening condition,aiming for her own hat-trick and overall fifth,theres an unmistakable feeling that the womens final at Wimbledon is drifting from one year to the next. The contests are just not memorable enough.
Its not that Wimbledon lacks formidable competitors,like the decade when Steffi Graf accumulated seven titles after Navratilovas nine. For,the Williamses can,between them,boast of nine of the last 11 championships (and the French Open across the channel has had eight different winners in 11 years); its just that a Saturday at SW 19 has paled in comparison with some stunning Sundays when the gentlemen take to the court in the Midas-era of mens tennis. Serenas harangue over being pushed to court 2 draws a shrugging grimace,no more.
True,there have been moments,like when Jana Novotna first choked and then found royal shoulders to cry on after the 1993 final,and five years later slew those demons to win the title. But theres been fewer of those compelling tales as Conchita Martinez and Lindsay Davenport prevailed in slug-fests to usher in the bicep-babes era,and Martina Hingis and Maria Sharapova barely followed up their stunning one-off successes at the Big W as 17-year-olds. As the unsettling trend of successive World No 1s with Grand Slam glory conspicuously missing seeped into WTA charts,womens tennis was predictably lacklustre.
Heading into yet another Wimbledon then,where Federer,Nadal,Djokovic and Murray offer an exciting last-4 line-up,the womens draw inspires a ready-reckoner: Ladies-in-Slumberland.
In the absence of a clear,long-lasting No 1 there have been 14 top-ranked women in the last decade the womens battle has been a free-for-all. Strangely,in a sport teeming with teens,theres a resurgence of seasoned women nearing 30 defying the obscurity of the journeyman tag and launching rearguard assaults late in their careers like Chinese Li Na and Clijsters in her second avatar as a tennis-mom. While Li Na brings a refreshing back story and candour to the sport and Clijsters wears her grit-and-grin garbs effortlessly,posing court-side with little Jada,both have battled injuries and threatened to drop off the radar. Both promptly lost in the second rounds of the subsequent Slams after winning the previous ones. The breed of womens champs and favourites has never been this vulnerable.
Arguably,the most interesting Wimbledon match this time featured Venus Williams and 40-year-old Kimiko Date Krumm,when the most decorated contender at the Wimbledon struggled to put it past Date-Krumm who had been away from the game for 12 years. Hitting 40,Kimiko displayed fluid volleying,a throwback to 20 years ago.
A memorable final may be hard to recollect,but Frenchwoman Marion Bartolis bohemian game double-fisted strokes,unorthodox serve and intense movements had sparred gamely and beat Justine Henins slice backhands and nimble movements in the three-set 2007 semi-final. Shes seldom given credit for her all-court proficiency,but Amelie Mauresmo won the 2006 final against Henin without comfortable recourse to baseline slam-bang. However,such instances are rare and baselines are used for trench-warfare.
At the core of this craving for more interesting tennis is perhaps a plain,old nostalgia for the time of Steffi Graf. And as an extension,a return to the times when Seles,Sanchez and Sabatini who,with their charming styles and attitudes,challenged the Germans might. In the baton-handover,Navratilova had ensured that Graf mirrored her power-game. And Graf,the likeable champion she always was,pulled off the hard-hitting game with aesthetic execution.
Womens tennis longs for a similar figure to establish herself at the top. For,post their 2008 master-class final,Federer,Nadal and company have shown no signs of letting up,making it tougher for the women to shine in comparison.
shivani.naik@expressindia.com
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