Howdy. I just had to walk all the way back up to the house because I left my Blackberry behind this morning, so this one will be brief – Novak Djokovic and Tomas Berdych are going to march out onto Centre Court in about, oh, five minutes.

Last night, I had a nice dinner with a bunch of folks, including Brad Gilbert and Cliff Drysdale. Brad’s two kids, Zack and Julie, were there. They’re impressive kids – smart, polite, personable; I’m sure some of you would have trouble believing they’re spawn of Brad, one of my favorite people in this screwy sport. Uncouth American, motormouth, all that. . . None of which I buy. I mean, the guy loves tennis with a passion, had all the street cred you could ask as former player and coach, and he’ll talk to anyone. And talk. I love that Brad calls Cliffy “Lord Drysdale.”

You can’t always judge parents by the quality of the kids they produce, at least not when those kids fall victim to adolescent struggles or temptations. But good kids almost always suggest good parents. Anyway, Brad is really high on Novak Djokovic and thinks he’ll have little trouble with Tomas Berdych today. I’m going the other way. Berdych in four.

This morning, we (the media) also met with Stacy Allaster of the WTA Tour (check Tom Perrotta’s Wimbledon Wire for the little hard news that came out of that). And we also had our last supper, er, presser, with Serena Williams. Now that Justine Henin is out of action with a bum elbow, Serena has been recruited to replace her in the Belgian exhibition next week. So the Best of Belgium has suddenly morphed into Best of the World.

It occurred to me that this Wimbledon is shaping up as Serena’s Grand Slam masterpiece, as exemplified by the way she’s been serving (80 aces so far). So I asked her about it. She replied: “I definitely think that my serve so far has done well, I’m hoping to do well one more match. Then I kind of have to analyze it, more than anything.”

Enjoy the tennis, feel free to post your thoughts on today’s action below.

– Pete

by Pete Bodo

After running out of steam and losing the last two sets to Vera Zvonareva in the Wimbledon ladies’ semifinals today, Tsvetana Pironkova said of the winner: “All of her strokes were really powerful: forehand, backhand. She made very good net approaches. Her serve was very consistent, also. So I think she did a very good performance today. And, of course, she has a chance for the finals…yeah, she has all of the chances.”

The praise for Zvonareva’s forehand and backhand, her net approach (as well as the unstated proficiency she shows at the net), was both kind and warranted. But Pironkova left out the most crucial bit, the part about what you might call Zvonareva’s brain, her fighting spirit, or her competitive mettle—or what takes shape in a player when all three of those elements work in unison. It’s what makes a player capable of playing her best tennis when it most matters.

That’s where Zvonareva has always been unconvincing, despite having one of the most versatile games on the WTA tour. And that’s where she will be most vulnerable when she plays for the Wimbledon title against Serena Williams, a woman who could conduct an adult-education class: Tennis Truculence 101. 

It looks pretty grim for Zvonareva, at least on the surface. But then, Zvonareva is a pretty good student, and an enthusiastic one, as Bobby Chintapalli informed us a few days ago in this piece. We’re not talking some cream-puff Internet course of study here, either. Zvonareva is enrolled at The Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which sounds both a little scary (if you’ve been following the unfurling spy scandal in the U.S.) and pretty danged serious. When Zvonareva was asked if she conducted her studies online, she replied, “No, I have to take classes over there and I have to take my exams when I’m coming back there.” First, though, she’ll have a tough exam here.

It’s too bad she has such a formidable assignment, because she’s had an outstanding tournament. But you know what they say about a reputation—it’s the easiest thing to acquire and the hardest thing to shed.

However, tennis has at times leavened its harsher realities by offering forgiveness and redemption; who can forget Andres Gomez winning the French Open in the twilight of his career, or even Goran Ivanisevic finally bagging the Wimbledon title he spent his entire career lusting after—and winning as a banged-up and seemingly washed-up veteran, in on a pity…er, wild card.

The more appropriate comparison, though, would be with Jana Novotna—perhaps not coincidentally a winner here. Surely you remember the saga: Novotna was a skill player, more like a Zvonareva (although she served-and-volleyed more often) than a Monica Seles or Steffi Graf. In 1993, Novotna experienced, literally, a championship meltdown against Steffi Graf on Centre Court. Novotna lost the first set in a tiebreaker, then rolled to a 6-1, 4-1, 40-15 lead before she came unglued. Graf stormed back to win the title, and Novotna wound up shedding tears on the shoulder of the cream-colored suit worn by the Duchess of Kent during the presentation ceremony.

Four years later, Novotna made another Wimbledon final, losing to Martina Hingis. But the following year, she survived a tense quarterfinal with a youngster named Williams (Venus) and went on to take the title over a surprise finalist, Nathalie Tauziat. Novotna, to be sure, was a more accomplished player than Zvonareva (she appeared in four Grand Slam finals, but won only one—the one that mattered most). She was also ranked as high as No. 2 in the world (1997). Zvonareva might think about setting aside that Russo-Canadian Relations, 1940-1960 textbook in favor of some video of Novotna at Wimbledon in 1998.

Still, Zvonareva took a large step toward off-loading her reputation as a poor competitor today, coming back from having lost the first set for the second round running. It’s good practice for the sort of test she’ll soon face. Tomorrow, she could take a final, giant step and bury the head case rap on her for good. Just think, no more Vera the headcase, mistress of the meltdown, queen of the quivering lip and the quaking right hand.

It’s been tough on her; it’s also given her a thick hide. As she said today, after slashing her way to the first Grand Slam final in her 30th major (only Zina Garrison and Tauziat played more majors before vying a title): “I don’t care what people say around. I can break the racquet, but it doesn’t mean I’m not there in the match. I’m trying all the time. But I think right now experience helps me a lot. I’ve been in a lot of different situations in the past of my career, and I think I know how to turn the matches around much better now. Even if something is not working, I think I know in my head that I just have to take it one point at a time and just keep trying. In the end, we will see what’s going to happen.”

One scenario would not be terribly pleasant, or helpful in Zvonareva’s quest to iron out the kinks in her temperament. That one has Serena Williams raining down aces on Zvonareva and denying her a chance to even get into the match. It could happen, regardless of Zvonareva’s mental or physical condition. In her win over a game but short-winded Petra Kvitova today, Serena ran her ace total to 80, a mind-boggling 50 aces better than her nearest rival—her sister Venus—and nearly triple Zvonareva’s output.

Kvitova played a very solid first set. She broke Serena’s serve (it was only the third time that’s happened in the entire tournament) and built a 4-2 lead, but the inevitable caught up with the improbable a few games thereafter, and in the ensuing tiebreaker, the southpaw Kvitova succumbed to a problem all too familiar to so many left-handed players—an erratic forehand. But even though Serena broke back, Kvitova played boldly and crisply. She seemed bent on doing to Serena what her Czech countryman Tomas Berdych had done to Roger Federer yesterday, and tried to do it with the same tools—smoking-hot serves, and penetrating, flat ground strokes.

But let’s face it; Federer surrenders a significant amount of firepower to men like Berdych, while not a single WTA player can match the power of Serena. Maria Sharapova and even Venus may come close, but in order to beat Serena you need some help from Serena. And she hasn’t been in a very charitable mood.

Serena had no fear of suffering the same fate as Venus, Clijsters, or Roger Federer, despite the viral manner in which upsets sometimes blossom. If it happened, she would have treated the loss philosophically. “I’d know I was in good company.”

Serena had her right shoulder taped yesterday, for her doubles. She and and her partner Venus were beaten in the quarterfinals, by Elena Vesnina and. . . Zvonareva. Some might take that as an omen, but when asked if the taping was preventive or indicative of a problem, Serena sighed and replied:

“Yeah, I had hit too many aces.”

Somehow, I have a feeling there are plenty more of those left in her arm.

“We need to see some more genius now.” This was BBC
commentator Boris Becker’s on-air coaching advice to Roger Federer during the fourth set of his match with Tomas Berdych on Wednesday. That’s a
pretty tall order, wouldn’t you say? 

Genius on command: It sounds like on
oxymoron and seems like a logical impossibility, but, unfortunately for
Federer, that’s what he’s made us expect will happen every time he steps on
court. First we watched him in his years of unprecedented dominance. More
recently we’ve seen his nervy comebacks from the precipice of defeat, one of which he’d pulled off just the week before, against Alejandro
Falla in the first round. Put it all together and most tennis fans, and even
observers as knowledgeable as Becker, believe that when Federer doesn’t reach
perfection or turn his game around at exactly the right moment, that something
has gone wrong—with him, with the sport, with the universe. There’s a
disquieting element to a Federer loss at Wimbledon, because at this point it’s more than an individual
failure. It’s almost as if he’s failed us, failed to prove that good—i.e., the
superior player—will always win out in the end. Down a break at 3-4 in the fourth, with
Berdych serving at deuce, Federer went for a big forehand return, caught it a
hair late, and sent it just over the baseline. Becker’s BBC boothmate was, in
his understated British fashion, flabbergasted. “We’ve not used to seeing that,”
he said. Two games later, at 4-5, Federer had a break point and a look at a
second serve; this was the moment everyone had been waiting for, when he would turn
on a dime, raise his game from iffy to brilliant, and break his opponent’s heart.
But Berdych hit his second ball with a little more depth and firmness than
he had been, and Federer’s forehand reply slumped and died on its way to the
net. This time both commentators cried, with real disbelief, “What happened?”

What happened was exactly what’s happened to every tennis
player, including Federer, since the game began. When a pro misses, it’s not just because he couldn’t find the court; it’s because he couldn’t place the ball exactly where he wanted it to go. At that level, each player needs to calculate how
risky or conservative he can make each shot, judging by the score and by what
his opponent can do in reply. In the final game, knowing Berdych would be nervous,
Federer’s calculations leaned to the conservative. He played a series of low
slice returns and low slice backhands, trying to force his 6-foot-5 opponent to
hit up on the ball. It worked. Federer got to 15-30 and had Berdych on the move in that rally. The Czech made a brilliant backhand save from the corner and
eventually won the point with a backhand volley that just touched the sideline.
Despite that, Federer still reached break point, where he netted the return
that so shocked the BBC’s announcers. It appeared that Federer was sticking with his
conservative calculations—they’d gotten him to break point, so why not?—by
trying to poke a forehand return low and down the middle. But, surprised by Berdych’s gutsy second serve, he put it a little too low.

In a broader sense, to answer Becker’s question, “what happened” was a tennis match. Perhaps the biggest tribute to Federer’s achievement over the last six years—and to Rafael Nadal’s similar
achievement on clay over the last five—is that everyone seems to have forgotten
that fact when he plays. As anyone who has ever played one knows, a tennis
match can go in any direction at any time; miss as few as two shots in a row
(and we’ve already seen the calculations that must go into every one of those
shots) and the whole thing can change complexion in your head and head south in a hurry. This particular match was one that, going in, was even less of a
given for Federer. His last two Grand Slam losses had been to Juan Martin del
Potro and Robin Soderling, both of whom, like Berdych, are tall guys who pummel
high, relatively flat balls off both sides. All of them, when they’re clicking, have the
power to knock Federer back and keep him from moving them side to side. Most
important, this spring Berdych had beaten Federer for the first time in six years. He knew it could be done, and aging legends like Federer
live off the fact that most of the guys they play don’t know that it can be done (see Falla).

Berdych won this match because he got low for Federer’s
persistent slice backhands—I love how balanced the Czech is on both sides, but
particularly when he gets in his stance for a low backhand; great preparation
on that shot. He won because Federer’s forehand went off for a couple of games in
the first set, long enough to surrender his serve. Berdych won with his wide
serve into the deuce court. He won by taking advantage of second serves. He won
because Federer was unsettled enough to play ill-advised drop shots on key
points, when forehand drives would have done the trick. Berdych won because,
when Federer had a game point at 3-3 in the fourth, he anticipated where he was
going with a forehand, kept himself in the point long enough to win it, and went on to record the decisive break from there. He won because, while he wavered a bit in the final game, Berdych never played outside himself. He believed in
his game, and in his ability to finish against Federer, enough to take his last
forehand and do exactly what he would have done with it at any other time:
Drill it for a winner.

So another tall man has sent Federer packing from a major,
this time at his beloved Wimbledon, where he had reached seven consecutive
finals. Does this herald a new future for men’s tennis? There have always been
tall players on the men’s side, and there have always been bombers. But guys
like Krajicek, Ivanisevic, and until now Soderling have been primarily a sideshow, dangerous on any given day but a little too inconsistent to
take the sport over from its more well-rounded champions. With Berdych and del
Potro, though, we’re beginning to see big guys who are also well rounded; they
can bomb, but they can also move and rally. Berdych gets an immense amount of
power with a very smooth and effortless-looking swing, something we’ve rarely
seen from a guy his height. It remains to be seen whether he and his fellow big
men can finally take center stage, and whether the ideal tennis frame will go
from 6-foot-1, 185 pounds, where it has been for 20 years, to something larger. Who knows, Federer may appear to future generations the way the 5-foot-9 Rod
Laver looks to us in old clips today.

As far as Federer himself goes, is the end of his era? Is he in terminal decline now
that his Wimbledon finals run has come to a close and he has dropped to No. 3 in
the rankings? Well, we asked the same question two years ago, and he came back
to reclaim the No. 1 spot in 2009. At the same time, his three-Slam seasons are
almost surely a thing of the past. Players whom he has owned are beating him,
and he’s finding that he can’t turn it on at the majors the way he has been in recent years. He’ll also need to find some kind of answer to the big boys; what
that is, I don’t know. Still, there’s no question in my mind that he will
win more Grand Slams, simply because he’ll
always put himself in contention. Unless he really falls off the map, though, I don’t
think “decline” is the right word for what will likely happen to Federer. I’d call it a  “return to reality.” Maybe, as he loses more
often, we can all realize again that tennis matches aren’t sure things, that
winning them over and over and over is not normal, that even Roger Federer can’t
always measure the perfect return of serve every time he needs one.

Afterward, Federer said he had leg and back issues. I’m not
sure why he volunteered this information. Maybe in the past he felt that he had
kept quiet about injuries and illnesses after losses only to feel the need to
mention them later, and this time he wanted to be up front about it. My first
reaction was that he had dug in his heels in front of the press, which is
what happened after he lost to Marcos Baghdatis at Indian Wells this year.
We’d tried to get him to praise Baghdatis’s serving, but Federer wasn’t having any of it. He’s one of those champions—Pete Sampras and the
Williams sisters are three others—who don’t believe they should lose if they’re
playing the way they should. It’s a useful attitude to have, and a self-fulfilling
prophecy, but it can also make these players search for excuses, extenuating
circumstances, for losses. That’s what I thought Federer was doing here when I
read his remarks, and so did Berdych when asked about them later. And to a
certain extent he was. Federer even blamed “unlucky” bounces and Berdych’s
ability to hit the ball “on the line over and over,” as if that were about his opponent’s luck rather than his skill.

Federer is right to be honest about what happened on the
court. That’s why he’s in the press room in the first place. Still, talk of his injuries perpetuates the idea that I mentioned
earlier: That he can’t actually, really, officially lose a tennis match. It’s
the same for Nadal on clay. His fans want to believe that he couldn’t possibly
lose at the French Open to Soderling unless his knees had hindered him. Like I said, it’s a tribute to Federer and Nadal that they’ve made people think this
way, that they’ve made people believe that the laws of tennis have been suspended
for them. Nevertheless, Soderling won in Paris, and Berdych won
yesterday. I believe Federer when he says he was hurting, but when I write
about a match my rule of thumb is that if I can’t see any visible sign of an
injury from a player, any slowing down or wincing, then I’m not going to
consider it a factor in the outcome. As Federer also said at Indian Wells this
spring, every player has some physical issue going on most of the time.
If you go by those words, Berdych probably did as well yesterday.

This morning I watched Federer’s presser, and his words
struck me a little differently. His heels weren’t all that dug in, and he didn’t seem to be blatantly making excuses. He was much more even keel than I thought
he would be. Did he even sound resigned to not winning Wimbledon? It seems
incredible to me, considering the reverence he has for the place. When I read his line about the quarterfinals being “a decent result,” I’d assumed that he was
covering up so he wouldn’t have to express his disappointment in public. And I’m guessing
that was part of it. But Federer also put this loss next to his quarterfinal
loss in Paris, as if it they were part of an unavoidable trend. He said, twice,
that “I’m winning my matches,” as if getting into the second week was an
accomplishment. Was this because of the injuries, or because his sights have been lowered? Was it all a rationalization, a cover, or was he sincerely
OK with losing at Wimbledon? Was he just tired of shouldering all those expectations of perfection and wanted to shrug a few of them off? I don’t know.
What I do know is that the day that Roger Federer says that the “quarters is a
decent result” for him at the All England Club, we really have reached the end of an
era. 

It will be different in the new one. Commentators won’t be able to call for genius on
command. Fans will have to stop believing that one player can suspend the laws of
tennis. We may have to start accepting it: Reality has returned.

Mornin’. This one will be quick, so I can get out of your road before the matches get underway. The big events of yesterday obscured a significant result, the loss by Venus and Serena Williams in the doubles. The sisters, and the calendar year Grand Slam they hoped to produce in 2010, have gone down the tubes. The American girls were put out in the quarterfinals, in three sets (6-4 in the decider) by Elena Vesnina and Vera Zvonareva.

Which makes me fear for Zvonareva’s life, should she win her singles semifinal today and find herself opposite Serena in the final on Saturday.

This was a hurtful loss for the sisters, who skipped out of the All-England Club without doing a press conference—not that the pressers are de rigeur for doubles quarterfinalists, but some journalists had put in a request for the meeting. Turns out they might be fined for blowing off the presser. That doesn’t particularly trouble me, although it would have been nice to see the transcript for this post. But it’s worth noting that a gold-standard doubles Grand Slam (meaning, winning all four majors in the same calendar year with the same partner) is even more rare than a singles Slam.

Who woulda thunk it?

Only one male team has ever competed a Grand Slam, Frank Sedgman and Ken McGregor, and that was way back in 1951—almost two decades before the dawn of the Open era.

And only one team of women has accomplished a Grand Slam—Martina Navratilova and Pam Shriver, in 1984—at which time their Grand Slam was part of a winning streak that would include eight consecutive Grand Slam titles.

Maria Bueno, Martina, and the other Martina (Hingis) also completed calendar-year Grand Slams, but with different partners (a grand total of four) for at least one leg of each Slam. But the Sedgman/McGregor Grand Slam stands alone; nobody—not the Bryan brothers, John McEnroe, Mahesh Bhupathi or the Woodys—had even a partial taste of Grand Slam glory.

I hope the Williamses come back and try again next year. One thing I had hoped to do at this tournament was to watch one of their doubles matches and write a post about it, but I guess I’ll have to wait until the U.S. Open.

Enjoy the tennis. Feel free to post  your comments on the women’s singles semifinals below.  I hope those self-inflicted sores some of you suffered plucking at your flesh after Roger Federer’s loss yesterday are healing up nicely.  Don’t forget to feed the children and change the water in the dog’s bowl.

– Pete

Kvitova, Pironkova, Schiavone, Stosur: Are you wondering
where these women came from? Are you wondering what’s happening in women’s
tennis right now? You’re not alone. This was supposed to be the year when the
old ruling class—in short, the Williamses, the Belgians, and Maria
Sharapova—was going to be reconstituted and set loose against each other in one
epic Grand Slam final after another. Instead, the last two majors have brought
us a parity that’s bordering on chaos.

Partially, this has been a product of the draws, and the wrench
that the current rankings of Justine Henin and Sharapova have thrown into them.
Henin had to face Sharapova and Stosur early in Paris, and Clijsters early at
Wimbledon. Maria, who seemed to be playing as well as anyone, had to face her
nemesis, Serena, in the fourth round at Wimbledon. But when you look at the
bigger picture, what’s striking isn’t that the old guard hasn’t dominated the way we
might have predicted, it’s that there’s no new guard there to take their
places. Each of the women I’ve mentioned so far made her debut all the way back in the 1990s, with the exception of Sharapova, who isn’t exactly a new face; she won Wimbledon in
2004. 

If you have a plausible overarching explanation for this aging process,
you’re one up on me. Clijsters and others say that it’s the physical nature of the
WTA now, and the women probably do hit harder then ever. But this has been a
long-running trend. When Steffi Graf won her Golden Slam in 1988, we didn’t
foresee someone like Monica Seles coming along so soon to knock off her off her pedestal—Graf played the most powerful and intimidating baseline game in the
history of women’s tennis up to that point. But there Seles was, just a couple of years later, taking Graf’s power and sending it right back—and past—her. When Serena won her Serena Slam in
2003, it looked like she would dominate for years. And, for the most part, she has. While she’s had her lean
seasons, no one has come along to knock off her and take over. There hasn’t
been a Monica, a new future, this time around.

The other theory I’ve heard recently is that the tour’s
age-eligibility rule, which limits the number of tournaments that young players
can enter, has held some girls back. This is also possible, but if there’s been a
player of Seles’ or Serena’s talent and competitive abilities who has been thrown off track by that
rule in the last decade, I’m unaware of her.

But, even though I’ve just spent 400 words on it, none of
that matters at the moment. There’s no reason to lament the lack of a new
Monica Seles, when the four players who are currently in the semis have provided us
with as much determined excellence (that would be Serena) and inspired surprise
(that would be the other three, the Va’s). We like to see the legends go head to head as often as possible, because their matches immediately go into the lore and
history of the sport. But one small beauty of the Grand Slams is that, when the stars fade out, the tournaments still go on
long enough for you to develop a brief but eye-opening connection with a new player or two. You may never see them again, but each of these players brings
something fresh to your appreciation of the sport. This week I’ve liked
Pironkova’s energy, court sense, and I’ll-hit-any-shot-it-takes-to-win
approach. I’ve liked Kvitova’s athletic attack, even if I can do without her
particular brand of fist pumping. And I’ve liked Zvonareva’s level
third-set head. She really doesn’t come across at all like a basket case off
the court. Deep down inside Vera, maybe there’s a cool competitor just waiting
to break out.

Will we see that competitor break out tomorrow in the semis?
The head to head isn’t comforting: In their only meeting, on hard courts in
Moscow last year, Pironkova routed a hurting Zvonareva 6-0, 6-2. And from a who-is-less-likely-to-melt-down-under-the-pressure-of-a-semifinal-on-Centre-Court point of
view, you’d probably go with Pironkova. She showed intelligence and craft in
the way she kept Venus on the run, and the ball out of her strike
zone, in the quarters. There’s just one minor issue from the Bulgarian’s standpoint: She’s not as good
as her opponent. I mean that purely from a ball-striking standpoint, of course,
but that’s the one that counts the most. The key for Pironkova will be to avoid a lot of straight-ahead baseline to baseline rallies. The key for Zvonareva will be to
keep it together if she doesn’t start winning those rallies right away.

Serena Williams and Petra Kvitova, 20, of the Czech
Republic, have also played just once, with Serena predictably winning 2 and 1, at the Aussie Open this year. Serena obviously played well at that
tournament—she won it—but I’d say she’s been even more impressive so far at
Wimbledon. She’s played with pretty much total calm and self-assurance—I don’t
think I’ve ever seen her smile and joke with her opponents as much as she has
here. Serena and her sister idolized, and were smart enough to model their
serves after, fellow Californian Pete Sampras growing up, and Serena has been
more than a little Sampras-like in the way she’s gotten through this draw. She’s been challenged, but
she’s won with her serve, and she’s won exactly when she’s had to win. There
can hardly be a more perfect distillation of the difference between Serena and
Sharapova than what happened at 9-9 in
their first-set tiebreaker. Sharapova threw in a wild double-fault; Serena took
the same ball and fired an ace for the set. Come to think of it, that’s what
separates Serena from everyone else these days, and maybe why she’s never been
knocked off that pedestal I mentioned earlier.

Does Kvitova have a chance? The first time I saw her play
was at the U.S. Open last year, when she upset the No. 1 seed, Dinara Safina. I came out of
that match thinking that it really hadn’t been an upset, that the better player
and bigger hitter, regardless of her ranking, had won. So, yeah, Kvitova, who can
play offense and create openings, and who competes with gusto, has a chance. It
may happen to be in hell, rather than at Wimbledon, but she has a chance.

By Pete Bodo

Howdy. I was just over at Radio Wimbledon, chatting on air with the station’s talented interviewer, Sam Lloyd. RW is one of the nicer features at Wimbledon; it’s a very professionally run operation with a robust, expert staff. More than a million people listen via the Internet, and I like thinking that some kid in Mumbai, or Uzbekistan, is sitting there, daydreaming about Wimbledon – imaging what it must be like to be here, to watch Roger Federer or Serena Williams swing the stick.

Yesterday was a remarkable day here at Wimbledon, and today could offer more of the same. Let’s face it, three of the four matches are very close to pick-ems  – the only quarterfinal prediction that would strain credulity would be Yen-Hsun Lu of Taiwan bouncing Novak Djokovic. This is a shame, because I really like everything about “Randy” Lu, starting with his ultra-clean game.

Things were a little hectic after Lu took out Andy Roddick the other day, so I didn’t catch his presser. It’s a pity, because it was a gem.

Lu is 26, and has been a pro since 2001. Unfortunately, his father – the guiding hand in his tennis development – died right around the time he turned pro. “He was always planning which direction I should go,” Lu remembered. “I should go to school or keep going professional?   In the moment (I decided to go pro), he pass away. So I’m just upset that he didn’t (share it) with me.That’s why I’m just very sad about this. But today I think he’s here and he also very happy for me. . . yeah.”

Lu’s father was a chicken farmer, raising the animals for tablefare. “I can catch chicken,” Lu revealed. “I can show you. Yeah, I’m serious. I can catch a chicken. It’s very tough work. You work between 1 and 6 in the morning, because that time the chicken cannot run away because they cannot see.”

But Lu had no desire to follow in his father’s footsteps in the barnyard, “I don’t really like because it smelled so bad. It’s tough work.”

In school, Lu was asked to choose an English name for his class in that tongue. He explained: “In Taiwan, it’s difficult to pronounce my (proper) name. So the English teacher, they want us to get American-style name.”

For reasons Lu didn’t disclose, he chose “Randy.” At the time, he didn’t know the meaning of the name when it’s used as a common-slang noun (okay, consult your Urban Dictionary, folks), and when asked if he wanted to know, Lu said, “No, better not. . .”

He smiled. He knows now.

Given the frosty relations between China and Taiwan, I can see weeping and hear the gnashing of teeth – as well heads rolling – in the Chinese tennis development program, which hasn’t produced a single male player of Lu’s caliber. I don’t see it as an embarrassment for China, but the way I see it doesn’t count; it’s how the Chinese see it.

The bitterness between tiny Taipei (aka the Republic of China) and giant China runs deep; in a capitulation to the Chinese, Wimbledon lists Lu as a native of Taipei (TPE), which is the Chinese name for the place the natives (including Lu) prefer to call Taiwan. Why Wimbledon would capitulate to the will of the Chinese on this I don’t know, but will attempt to find out.

Anyway, Novak the Entertainer is a prohibitive favorite in the match, but the way things have been going here that hardly means he’s safe. Maybe Lu can pull off another upset, and celebrate with the chicken dance. He’s on the run of a lifetime, and that always diminishes the significance of the form chart.

As Lu said the other day, trying to explain how he felt after surviving Roddick: “I make this result. I’m really proud myself to share this victory with him (my father) in the sky. I hope he see this match. So in that moment, I just sit and tell myself, I done it. I done for my father. I done for myself also.I done for all the people support me.”

Enjoy the tennis, feel free to post your comments on the action here.

by Pete Bodo

It’s the cruelest swing of all, in a game that can be full of them. One moment, you’re up 5-4 and serving for the match at Wimbledon, where a single service break can be insurmountable. It’s match point, but something goes awry and you fail to convert. Deuce. You lose the next point, and you’re now down break point—one measly forehand error or double fault away from dead even. You’ve slid from the summit of achievement all the way down into the valley of despair.

Tomas Berdych found himself in just that position today, in the fourth set of his match against Roger Federer, the defending Wimbledon champion and six-time singles titlist. Worse yet, he then served up a fault on first serve. The world, or at least that portion fixated on tennis, held its collective breath. And Federer could provide them no reason to exhale. As the ball approached his powerful, quick-strike forehand, his knees locked up and he more or less waved at the ball, sending it on a leisurely trip into the net.

It was a telling moment, and don’t for a moment think it had anything to do with the back or leg injuries that Federer cited in his subsequent press conferences. It wasn’t his back that failed, and it wasn’t his leg. It was his nerve. That’s how it is when a great champion’s determination and courage begin to ebb. And, like the proverbial cuckold, he’s always the last to know.

True, it isn’t as if converting that break point would have guaranteed Federer yet another back-from-the-brink win of the kind he managed in his first-round match with Alejandro Falla. And it’s not like Federer has morphed from the greatest player of all time into chump-of-the-month. But that point represents Federer’s present dilemma, and it will stand as a handy symbol for the price Federer has had to pay for emerging from that cocoon of invincibility in which he’s lived so long.

For most of this year, Federer has—consciously or not—operated on the premise that when it really matters, he’d be able to summon up not just his A-game, but his A-desire. His A-appetite. His A-determination.

Not true. What he conjured up today, when he most needed to perform like a storybook hero, was his A-humanity. He’s just like you and me. Only better at tennis. As he would say, after an unconvincing if healthy bout of excuse-making (turns out he was “unlucky” as well as hurt), “I definitely gave away this match, I feel.”

The man Federer “gave” it to saw it a little differently. Berdych was reasonable in his assessment of Federer’s post-match comments, suggesting without malice that Federer was just “looking for excuses.” He dismissed the bad-luck motif, and told us that all this stuff about the back and whatnot was news to him—when he’d read the newspaper in the morning, Federer said he felt “fine,” and pointed out that despite Berdych’s win over him at Wimbledon, Federer won “pretty easy” the last time the men met there.

Neither Federer nor Berdych is given to trash-talking, and Berdych understands that a multiple Wimbledon champion and owner of 16 major titles is unlikely to pronounce himself unworthy of beating a guy who’s only made the semifinals at one other Grand Slam event—a month ago in Paris. But it’s also unlikely that Berdych is going to melt back into the tour woodwork, just another big guy with a big serve and equally menacing ground strokes who happened to come up with a hot hand when it most mattered.

Greg Couch, an AOL.com columnist, asked a pertinent question of Federer: Are these big, strapping guys taking your measure, do you need to do anything differently to combat the threat they represent? After all, Berdych, who’s now 2-0 against Federer in 2010, as well as Robin Soderling, who blasted Federer out of the French Open in the quarterfinals (thereby ending TMF’s Grand Slam semifinal streak at 23) are among the top performers this year (Soderling lost today to Rafael Nadal, albeit while suffering from an injury that was confirmed by a televised close up of his heavily taped foot during an injury timeout).

The way Berdych and Soderling have been playing is bound to resuscitate the “big men will rule” predictions that began when Marat Safin astonishingly belted his way to the U.S. Open title back at the dawn of the new millenium, and which Roger Federer, with assists from Rafael Nadal and the unreliable Safin himself, stopped dead in its ontological tracks. But now that Federer appears increasingly vulnerable, and Soderling and Berdych have shown themselves capable of beating both icons, it’s bound to re-emerge—with a vengeance.

Federer dismissed Couch’s suggestion, saying, “Well, if I’m healthy I can handle those guys, you know. Obviously it’s a pity that [Juan Martin] del Potro is not around, because I think he would have a run at world No. 1 or a run at another Grand Slam. It’s unfortunate for him. But, you know, he’s been playing well, and these guys do play very well. I played these guys 10 times. They’re not going to reinvent themselves in a year, you know.” 

Funny that Federer should mention del Potro, who overwhelmed him in the U.S. Open final last September. Del Potro has been sidelined since the beginning of this year with a terrible wrist injury, and his return has been put off month after month. But put him in the company of Berdych, Soderling, and perhaps even Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, as a new wave of big men reviving an old theory. Perhaps Federer, in his signature passive-aggressive way, is not as oblivious to the big man theme as he made out. It’s undeniable that in the last four Grand Slam events he’s played, he’s lost to one of the towering, physical players three times (on the fourth occasion, he beat Andy Murray for the Australian Open title in February).

Federer was talking about his sore back when he said, “It’s just not nice when it doesn’t go away and you can’t play freely. That’s what I was missing today.” But it was not simply Federer’s back that prevented him from assuming leadership in the match, and working his magic untrammeled. As he said a little later: “He [Berdych] played well when he had to. It was brutal for me. Every time he had a chance, he took it. On the break points—he played great on those. Then when I had chances early on, I was actually not too bad, I just felt like I got the unlucky bounce once in a while, you know. Thirty-all he got it on the line over and over again. I just felt like I couldn’t create enough chances to really get the breakthrough. When I did have chances, I played poorly. It was just a frustrating match the way it all went.”

With those words, Federer gave a fair description of exactly why it can be so hard to beat a big, powerful player who can lean on you, take your time away, irrespective of the state of your back, or leg. It’s true on any fast surface, and particularly so here at Wimbledon. Sure, the courts have been slowed down, making life easier for ground-strokers and baseline players. But the impact on the serve has been less pronounced, and the serve remains a greater weapon on grass than any other surface.

So what of that critical swing at the end of the match, with Berdych going from match point up to break point down?

“I think it was one of my, like, toughest close up of a match when I was serving. I would say through all my career matches, this one was the toughest one to close up, this match against Roger, Centre Court in Wimbledon. But, you know, I handle it pretty well. I just closing up with my serve. I didn’t lost it. And, you know, I mean, that’s how it is. It was a really close match, about a few points. This day it just went on my side.”

That’s an honest and humble assessment from a man who made the round-trip from the peak to the valley and lived to tell about it. Luck had very little, if anything, to do with that exalted journey.

My soccer career ended very early. I was about 12, and I was playing a two-on-two game in one of the unused, semi-public yards that gave the kids in my neighborhood a little room to run. I had a breakaway (at least that’s what we call it in basketball). I ran toward the goal—two
baseball gloves lined up about 15 feet apart—while my teammate and opponents
lagged behind. When I looked back, I saw that they’d given up altogether. This must have thrown me off, because as I
came near the goal, I had trouble controlling the ball and keeping it moving forward. In my frustration and anxious desire to score, I finally just picked
it up and hurled it through.

Listening to the reactions of my fellow Americans to this
year’s World Cup, I’m beginning to think that my story could serve as a
metaphor for our relationship with the sport. Frustration is the watchword:
“Nothing ever happens.” “You think there’s going to be a good play, and then
someone messes it up.” “I turn my head for a second and miss the only goal.”

And it’s true, this time around the World Cup has made me
believe that the fundamental problem with soccer is that it’s just too hard (message
to the sport’s rule-makers: it would help if you could use your hands). It’s too hard to control the ball long enough to score, which
leads to the aspect of the game that Americans don’t get: The total lack of results.
In baseball, you get some kind of result with each at bat; in the NBA, you see two points scored on each of roughly 100 trips down the court; in football, teams can sustain many
drives all the way down the field and into the end zone. To us, a suspiciously large number of
soccer’s results—its goals—look like random occurrences, the products of a
lucky bounce off a goalkeeper’s hands or a dubious call that leads to a penalty
kick. On paper, we know the sport can’t be all luck—Brazil’s five Cups prove
it—but in practice it can seem that way to our untrained eyes.

This year, like any tennis fan, I’ve watched the World Cup,
soccer’s biggest event, in tandem with tennis’ biggest event, Wimbledon. Some
days I’ve had tennis on one screen on my computer, and soccer on a screen
behind it—you can hear the vuvuzelas buzzing away back there. Like rugby,
croquet and badminton, tennis and soccer each got their formal start in Victorian England (cricket also went international during
this time). The rules of soccer were codified there in 1863; tennis was
invented there in 1873. Why this sports explosion? The cricket writer and
historian C.L.R. James says that once democracy became rooted in the West
through the 18^th and 19^th century, it quickly became clear what the people wanted more than anything else: They wanted games.

Tennis, invented as a way to sell sets of racquets and balls
to the masses and capitalize on the craze for garden-party activities, was taken up by
private clubs and became an elite sport. Soccer, played at elite English
public schools in the 1800s, went mass all around the world. All around the
world, that is, except in the U.S. Here, soccer comes with an elite flavor. Where tennis is a symbol of wealth, soccer in the States is a symbol of
liberal open-mindedness, kind of like joining a CSA. Where I grew up, the kids
who played it all went to a private, craft-loving, hippie-ish elementary school
(think cubbyholes instead of lockers). Where I live now, in Brooklyn, it’s
considered a healthier and safer alternative to baseball or American football.

Alternating between the World Cup and Wimbledon over the
last week, it’s been hard to believe that the two games came from
the same place and time. In soccer, fans live with long
stretches where no goals are scored or shots taken. Tennis is nothing but
results; something is decided every minute. Soccer is about the quick, shocking
burst into the goal that seems to come from nowhere. Tennis is a slow
but inexorable accumulation of points. Soccer is a gray area; was he pushed or
did he dive? Tennis is clearly marked; the ball is either in or out, and
unlike soccer we use the technology at hand to prove it one way or the other.
Half of the fun of soccer seems to be crowd participation, whether it’s
singing, calling for your opponent’s blood, or blowing a kazoo. Tennis fans are
forbidden from making any noise while play is going on. Self-expression
versus hushed reverence, messiness versus order: Like C.L.R. James might have
said, if democracy does nothing else, it gives every class and group of people
their game.

I love the fact that Americans don’t care about
soccer. It proves that nothing in the universe is universal, and that a game
really is nothing more than a game. (I also wonder if the passion the rest of
the world feels for it would be quite as deep if America started to
dominate it.) I love that I can see What’s-His-Name Messi on TV and just
say, “Oh, there’s that guy, I think I’ve seen him somewhere before…” like any
idiot in the U.S. who doesn’t know Michael Jordan from Derek Jeter. It
makes me realize that having to care about sports stars can be oppressive, and a little pathetic. It’s
nice not to be in awe of at least one group of millionaire athletes. (Except Maradona, of course. He’s
must-see TV.)

Can we say which is better, tennis or soccer? One teaches
solo resourcefulness, the other teamwork. One speaks to group identity; the
other singles out the individual as the most important unit. Both are cruel,
both can be decided by inches, both require a razor-thin balance of patience
and aggression. Both produce their share of egomaniacs and gentlemen. Both have
stuck with their Victorian rules and traditions and avoided drastic changes to
make themselves more “fan-friendly” (i.e., dumber). It may try a new
ball every now and then, but if any sport proves that you don’t need much
scoring to keep fans—billions of fans—interested, it’s soccer. People don’t seem to be so easily bored as our entertainment industry likes to think. The
most popular entertainment on earth is the one where, on the surface, the
least happens.

Whatever soccer’s mysterious appeal, I’ll always believe that tennis
is the superior sport. It helps that I know how to play it, and how to watch
it. I have no idea how to watch a soccer game. Every four years I start to
learn, I start to appreciate the moves and dribbles and runs and passes even
when they lead to nothing. But after a month it disappears on me again. I admire soccer for, metaphorically, admitting that futility is
part of life—the best-laid plans of its players almost always go astray. But,
and maybe this is an American thing, I also find that admission depressing.
What I like about tennis is that you get to use every part of yourself to
succeed—your brain, your legs, your heart—and you have to become a master of every element of it. You do the serving and the volleying; you play offense and
defense. And every second game, you get to be in total control. You get to
dictate how a point, and those few seconds of your life, will begin. Nothing
seems futile when you step up to serve. The ball is in your hand.

by Pete Bodo

Mornin’, all. The second Tuesday at Wimbledon, the Grand Slam event that most scrupulously sticks to the SFD (Scheduling Fairness Doctrine, which mandates that all players compete with as close to equal rest as possible), is off-the-cliff day.

Monday, it’s like the battle of Stalingrad, with all those intriguing and competitive fourth-round matches featuring both sexes playing out. You can almost hear the screams of agony and outrage, the bellows of courage and rallying cries. Bodies blow up (just ask Andy Roddick) left and right, chaos stretches from Henman Hill all the way to Court no. 2.

Then comes Tuesday. Women’s quarterfinals. All four matches played in the exclusive confines of Centre or No. 1 Court. No men’s singles, because the wounded are recuperating to fight again Wednesday.

Tuesday is a good day for ladies walking around in big floppy hats, their fleshy arms roasted pink by an unfamiliar sun. Proper gentlemen, including members of the All-England Club, escorting their wives, who emulate the Duchess of Kent, not, like the kids, Lady Gaga. Greasy-haired and pimply teen-agers in ghastly t-shirts and hip hugger jeans, frayed all around the edges down at their flip-flops. British youth have disheveled down to a science.

Sorry, but it’s kind of dull on Tuesday. Er, did I say “Sorry?” Forgive me for adapting the protective coloration of the local species.

Ever notice how the British have mastered the gallant, ineffably polite, utterly insincere, one word synonym for any number of sharper words or expressions, including. . . Whatever. . . .What’s your problem?. . .Get out of my face . . . Goofball. . .Sometimes, you can imagine the thought bubble accompanying that crisply or enthusiastically rendered “sorry”: Forgive me for failing to remember that it’s your planet!

The other night, I watched a guy in a restaurant complain about the cigarette smoke wafting in through the open, floor-to-ceiling windows, where a few slackers stood around on the sidewalk sucking down Rothmans. One of the kids took a half-step away and said, “Sorry.” Then he grinned from ear-to-ear.

Three women are blocking the narrow sidewalk as you walk up; at the last moment they part just enough to let you pass and sing out in unison, in a flirty, gay tone: Sorry!

A guy in an intersection drops his umbrella and looks up as you pass him by: Sorry!

You think, What the hail are you apologizing to me for? 

That would be the pre-emptive “sorry.” Just in case his dropping his brolly has cause you an inconvenience. But there are other sorrys, too. All kinds of sorrys, to cover all kinds of situations. I think if you inadvertently broke wind while walking down the street, you’d tease a sorry out of someone, even as you were so aflame with shame that you couldn’t bring yourself to utter your own word of apology, which is really the one that’s required.

Instead, you get the sympathy or empathy “sorry.” Sorry! Hate to be present to see you embarrass yourself! Which, come to think of it, is one of the nicer manifestations of the “sorry” obsession. It would certainly be less consoling if, instead of saying “sorry,” the gentleman or lady said: My, what a pathetic, gross creature you are. . . Of course, that’s exactly what he’s thinking, but the “sorry” softens the blow and invites you to lie to yourself: Well, I guess that wasn’t so bad. These folks sure are nice and polite, so maybe I’m over-reacting here.

The only problem with that, of course, is that next time you might be more inclined to allow yourself a little lapse in manners, or judgment, either knowing you’ll be forgiven, or at least not called out about it. But that’s okay, the British love to be tolerant, and having the upper hand is a little like money in the “sorry” bank. When they turn you down for inappropriate dress, or some other consideration you seek, they can smile pleasantly. Sorry!

But on the whole, British have been very good about not taking advantage of their orgy of apologetic exclamations. Thankfully, this doesn’t appear to be one of those slippery slopes, although it’s slicker than it once was. If these folks weren’t truly polite, down deep, they’d be barging into each other left and right, blowing smoke in each other’s faces, knocking over little old ladies, belching on the bus, filling the air with the war cry of politesse, real or imagined: Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry! Remember, kiddies, you can do anything  you like as long as you remember, when taken to task for it, to say, Sorry!

Okay, so today I’ll be watching all four women’s matches, but I’m planning on writing about the Kvitova vs. Kanepi match. You watch, this big, serve-and-volley capable Czech girl, Kvitova, has the game to win this whole thing.

Sorry!

by Pete Bodo

Tsvetana Pironkova comes from Plovdiv in Bulgaria, a nation that has not a single grass court (although it sure has no shortage of consonants). It doesn’t have a single tennis academy. Pironkova’s father is a canoeing champion-slash-tennis coach, which is a little like being a shoemaker-slash-dentist.

Pironkova, ranked No. 82, lost in the first round in nine consecutive tournaments during one horrendous stumble in a generally dismal 2009 (she wasn’t the only Wimbledon quarterfinalist who’d just as soon forget 2009; Kaia Kanepi crashed and burned in the starting blocks 11 consecutive times). And Pironkova had won exactly one match at Wimbledon before this year. But she never lost faith. As she said after her sensational upset of Venus Williams in the quarterfinals: “Wimbledon has always been, you know, like a religion to me.” 

Which sort of implies that Venus Williams is something like Athena, Buddha, the earth mother, Joan d’Arc and Oprah all rolled into one. That made no difference to Pironkova, for even the gods get a little tired of hurling all those thunderbolts and imposing their will on recalcitrant mortals. Pironkova capitalized on Venus’ alarming inconsistency (the five-time Wimbledon champion won just 38 per cent of the points played from the baseline, and hit the same low number of aces as her opponent—three—while tossing in four more double faults for a total of five). Pironkova played solid tennis on the key points, which is all that was really required to topple Venus from her pedestal today. The biggest mistake she avoided was trying to play too well.

Pironkova’s reverence for Wimbledon is no small thing. It’s easy for many of us to forget that in more of the world than not, Wimbledon remains the mecca of tennis, often the only outpost of tennis with which people are even vaguely familiar. Whether Pironkova’s reverence for this tournament played a role in her career-defining moment was a factor today can be debated, but the daunting nature of her mission—to play well here in London—can be established. She hadn’t set foot on a grass court until she traveled to nearby Roehampton to play Wimbledon qualifying. It was so long ago that she doesn’t even remember the year (she guessed 2005); she may be just 22, but as she told us today:

“I started [tennis] ever since I was a baby actually, because my father is a tennis coach. Maybe the first time I hit the ball I was around three years old, and later on I started to play more seriously.  My first tournament I think I played when I was seven years old or something like that. That’s pretty much it. My father is a coach. So I spent, you know, almost the whole of my life on the tennis court.”

Trying to recall that first experience on grass at Roehampton, she said: “Back then, I thought, Wow, it’s impossible. How can I play on this surface? But with every match that I play on grass I feel better and better.”

All those hours spent entrenched on whatever baseline was handy back in Plovdiv, and her expanding portfolio on grass, paid off for Pironkova today—a day with a double-barreled surprise for the pundits. While Pironkova stood her ground against Venus, Kim Clijsters went to pieces against a young lady who knows a thing or two about melting down herself, Vera Zvonareva. Clijsters’ collapse—although “paralysis” would be a better word to describe her general demeanor in the decisive third set—was especially shocking in light of how well she had played yesterday while wrecking her countrywoman, Justine Henin.

But never mind about that. Clijsters and even Zvonareva are known quantities, each in her own way a flawed competitor to this point in her career. Pironkova, though, is relatively unknown, through no fault of ours. She was refreshingly direct and clear-headed in her press conference. She said of her win, “Well, I didn’t have a particular strategy against her. I just tried to play my game, which is like move her as much as possible. I tried to put my first serve as much as I could in the court. Yeah, I think I also did a very good defense. Well, I cannot say what surprised me. But I think it was quicker than I thought. Winning 6-2, 6-3, it was the biggest surprise for me. I expected like a longer match.”

So did Venus. But give the older of the Williams sisters credit for how she handled this disaster, if not for how she played. She was forthcoming and humble during the post mortems; there was no trace of the familiar opacity despite the magnitude of her hurt.

“It’s very disappointing,” she said. “I felt like I played some players along the way who played really well. You know, I think she played really well, too, but maybe not as tough as my fourth round or my third round or even my second round. You know, to not be able to bring my best tennis today and to just make that many errors is disappointing in a match where I feel like, you know, I wasn’t overpowered. I wasn’t hit off the court or anything, where I just kind of let myself exit. So obviously I’m not pleased with this result, but I have to move on.  What else can I do?  Unless I have a time machine, which I don’t.”

Venus was particularly weak in the take-charge department. Pironkova is the kind of player who’s expert at poking at the dog with a stick. She’ll leave an opponent with a chance to take a fairly neutral, mid-court ball, daring her to do something with it, and trust in her own ability to retrieve or counter-punch. She lured Venus into going for too much—although the favorite’s inability to produce even just enough was just as much a part of her undoing. Venus put it this way: “I just let it spiral and didn’t get any balls in. I mean, I had a lot of opportunities and a lot of short balls. I just seemed to hit each one out.”

She wasn’t being coy; she made 29 unforced errors, to six by Pironkova.

Some losses—or wins, for that matter—are triumphs of technique. Others are propelled by emotions, intelligence, technique or strategy. In which of those departments was Venus most lacking?

“All.” After waiting for the sympathetic laughter to subside, she elaborated: “I didn’t bring my best tennis today. And sometimes, like I said, you really have to live in the moment. I got too caught up in the mistakes I was making instead of just letting it go and moving on. I expect a lot from myself, especially at this tournament.  When I missed a few shots, I think I just kind of, you know, maybe was a little too hard on myself. Usually I stay, you know, for the most part, pretty positive.” 

By any standard, this was a most unusual quarterfinal day at Wimbledon; and here I was, expecting to focus on the journey taken by two fairly obscure players—Kaia Kanepi and Petra Kvitova—into the great unknown kingdom called Semis. As it turned out, neither of them embarked on the trip with a decent GPS. Kaia Kanepi blew a 4-0 third set and multiple match points to allow Kvitova to survive 8-6.

Kvitova was so transported by the challenge that she added a new phrase to the grunting lexicon. Upon winning any of a number of notionally “crucial” points in the final set, she turned to her coach in the player’s box and uttered a short, sharp squeal – as if she had just seen a mouse, but had no stool to leap upon to escape.

All this means that either Zvonareva or Pironkova will play her first Grand Slam final come Saturday. And on Thursday, Kvitova will have to look across the net at Serena Williams, a cat with considerably sharper, larger claws. Still, Kvitova has a huge game; if she can find a heart to match, Serena will have her hands full. But I wouldn’t count on it. Kvitova was asked in her press conference if she believes she can win, and she answered with a frank but not very confidence inspiring “No.”

In some ways, Venus losing before she has to meet Serena might be liberating for the surviving Williams. After all, Serena need feel no conflict or stress about having to take part in another intra-family war. Nor does she have to peek at the draw to see how Venus is doing, which must always remind her of their unique, emotionally tricky situation. Did Venus think she made Serena’s life any easier by losing today?

“Hopefully it makes everybody’s life easier in the draw. . . maybe. But, you know, regardless, I hope that she can win.”

Serena also chimed in on the subject, later: “No (it isn’t a blessing). I obviously always want her to do well and want her to be right there.”

No doubt about it, Serena towers over this reduced field of four. It’s hard to see her leaving London an also-ran, but stranger things have happened. And that was just today.