 |
|||||
|
Lindsey
beats the people’s choice
by Paul Teetor
Monica Seles said it was all luck, but Bud Collins wasn’t having any of that nonsense — and neither was the crowd.
"Come on Monica, you hit three straight winners on three straight match points," Collins said. "That can’t be all luck." The crowd of more than 5,000 tennis fans at Sunday’s Estyle.com Classic final roared in agreement with Collins, the veteran NBC tennis analyst who does double duty as an awards ceremony host. Monica just giggled modestly.
Suddenly, from way up in the nosebleed sections came a loud group of male voices with a familiar chorus: "WE LOVE YOU MONICA.’’
Seles blushed, recognizing the trio of male voices that had supported her for seven days, offering loud, raucous support when she needed it most during an electric week in which she beat the number one, seven, and 12th ranked players in the world — all in three-set matches featuring white-knuckle tie-breakers.
Lindsey Davenport won the Estyle.com Classic Sunday afternoon with a straight set victory over an exhausted Seles, but it was Seles who dominated the week.
Despite the home-town-girl-wins-again angle, Davenport’s victory was a disappointment to much of the crowd. The hour-long final, both in terms of the quality of tennis and sheer drama, was anti-climatic after a week of incredible tennis that had everyone still buzzing about Seles’ instant-legend performance Friday night, when she fought off six match points to subdue an equally determined Serena Williams, 6-2, 3-6, 7-6(7-2).
"Poor Monica gave it all she had left, fought as hard as she could," said 78-year-old Florence Ridley of Santa Monica, moments after Davenport’s 6-1, 6-4 victory in just under an hour. "But we’re still proud of Monica. I’ll never forget that Friday night match."
Davenport herself paid tribute to the Seles-Williams match.
"I was in the trainer’s room, getting a massage,
and we kept hearing the roar of the crowd getting louder and louder," she
said. "I’d never heard it that loud, except maybe in New York at the
US Open, so finally we both rushed out and caught the end of the third set and
the tiebreaker. It was unbelievable tennis."
Lightning
In a Bottle
It was already shaping up as a classic Friday night fight, a tennis version of the old boxing promotions. It was one of those battles where everyone just knew it was going to be a great match, if only because it featured two first-name Tennis Goddesses, Monica and Serena.
Seles was on her amazing comeback tour, where suddenly she has been beating players she couldn’t beat since her comeback in 1996 from a 1993 stabbing incident in Germany. And she was still getting over the loss of her father to cancer last year.
Serena, caught up in her own psychodrama, had become the other Williams sister, the one who has been all tease and no production since her so-called breakthrough win at the ’99 US Open, where she shocked the world — and Venus - by becoming the first Williams sister to win a Grand Slam event.
But rather than launching the ultra-talented Serena into the stratosphere, the psychic shock of her sister’s ‘99 Open upset gave Venus a new-found focus and steely determination to reach her full potential. While Venus has been piling up Grand Slam wins since then — the only true markers on the path to tennis immortality — Serena has come up empty and more and more frustrated in the process.
"I told you already," she snapped at the press earlier in the week. "I’m not talking about ’99 any more. It’s bad luck for me."
Every other month or so she announces a new-found level of dedication and commitment, but it’s always the same old story: she steamrolls the lesser players and then falters when paired up in the late rounds with her peers: Venus, Martina, Lindsey, Monica and Jennifer. Sometimes she doesn’t even make it to the semis or finals, falling early to some up-and-comer like Kim Clijsters, Justine Henin or Amelie Mauresmo.
Adding spice to the quarterfinal match: the sold-out crowd was easily the most diverse gathering of the week, with a healthy scattering of black faces to offset the typically white-bread crowd that came earlier in the week. And there was no doubt who they were backing. Every cry of "Come on Monica," was met by "We Love You Serena" and "You Go Girl."
Seles herself was struck by the crowd’s intensity.
"The crowd was so into it," she said. "Very rarely do you feel electricity like that."
Seles came out with all her signature shots working: reach-for-the-sky serve, grunt-and-groan groundstrokes, and a delicate, one-handed drop shot. Williams, shedding her flamboyant red-and-black outfit for a more subdued gray-and-blue one, was all muscle and speed, too wired to keep more than two or three balls on the court in a single point. Seles ran off with the set, 6-2.
|
Cory Ann Avants thrilled the early-week crowd with her two-hands-on-both-sides groundstrokes and fist-pumping, thigh-slapping competitiveness. Her fast-forward, fight-to-the-death style reminded fans of a very young Monica Seles, her childhood role model. But the little girl from Gastonia, North Carolina has grown up quickly. Ranked second in the national 18’s as a 15-year-old, she turned pro right after her 16th birthday last April. She travels the circuit with her grandparents, her father, and her mother Sharon, here with her after an early morning practice session. Her professional goal: "To be number one in the world and stay in the top ten, like Monica." Photo by Ray Vidal. |
But suddenly every Serena shot had a purpose, she took her time between points, and she exerted her greater natural talent, her edge in size, speed and athleticism. Before the crowd could say "third set," Serena had taken the second set 6-3 and the quality of tennis was escalating at a dangerous rate.
The third set — for its quality of play and degree-of-drama — should be perserved in a time capsule and taken out to be shown when Monica and Serena are inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame.
On only two of the six match points did Serena choke: one double fault and one apparent drop shot that was so mis-hit it landed over the baseline. But on the other four match points, Serena hit blazing serves and fierce goundstrokes, only to watch stone-faced as Monica replied with clean winners, roll-the-dice-and-go-for-it shots that broke Serena’s heart, ignited the crowd and gave Monica a surge of adrenaline that carried her through a no-sweat tie-breaker.
By far the most bizarre aspect of the match: the silence just before play began was frequently broken by a deep voice yelling "Cmon, Meat." After about a dozen times, fans in the grandstand at the far end of the court noticed it was Richard Williams, lugging a huge camera and calling out what is apparently a family nickname for Serena. In the third set, he was at the near end of the court, again calling out: "C’mon, Meat."
The buzz in the press tent says the Williams parents are seperated, that mother Oracene is doing most of the coaching these days and that Richard is reduced to coming to those tournaments Oracene chooses not to attend. It also would explain his new-found photographic hobby, perhaps even his very public display of personal friendship with football bad-boy Jim Brown earlier in the week.
Our Lindsey
While Serena and Monica were going through their tennis diva dramas, Lindsey Davenport just glided through her half of the draw, playing better and better as she destroyed Natalie Tauziat in the semifinals and then Seles in the final. Her late-week game showed her at her finest: a killer serve backed up by laser-beam groundstrokes and a first volley with a lot of stick on it.
"I’m crazy like that," Davenport said. "Some days I’ll come out and play lousy and then the next day I’ll come out and play great."
So after seven days of screaming their well-coordinated, frat-boy chorus of "WE LOVE YOU MONICA," the deepthroated, high-in-the-grandstand trio finally gave in to reality and let loose with Plan B: "WE LOVE YOU LINDSEY."
It came cascading down right in the middle of the awards ceremony, and finally Davenport looked up and smiled, really smiled -- for the first time all week -- as she held the trophy aloft and drank in the crowd’s affectionate cheers.
If it couldn’t be Monica, it might as well be our Lindsey.