A tale of two losers: Hingis article

A tale of two losers

by Peter Bodo


I started the day at Suzanne Lenglen Court, where Venus Williams, wearing a daffodil and looking good in it, mixed it up with surprise quarterfinalist Nicole Vaidisova. The first set was interesting stuff; the ladies threw roundhouse punches and led with their chins, neither of which was made of glass.

When Vaidisova blew a 5-2 lead in the tiebreaker (losing five points in a row; about as thorough a collapse as you could script) it appeared like it might be all over. But credit the first time Grand Slam quarterfinalist: she screwed down her wayward elbow and turned up the heat, roaring back to take the last two sets.

Venus, meanwhile, was all over the map. She looked great one moment, awful the next, and went down rather meekly, getting just four games in the last two sets.

The striking thing for me was that here was a multiple Grand Slam champion and former World No. 1 , a girl who had to be well-rested and, at least theoretically, hungry. How does someone with that resume, still at the physical peak of her powers, slash back the way she did and then get cut to ribbons – by a quarterfinal debutante, no less?

The key, I think, is in the way Venus lost. It looked to me like she ran out of steam in the final set, but not because she was out of shape. She looked more like she was mentally tired, and just unable to keep her concentration and enthusiasm up for that much longer.

Notably, one of the first questions in her presser was a refreshingly brief and clear one: Did you tire in the third set?

Her reply:

No, no. I didn't tire. In fact, no. Actually, I didn't tire. That's the answer (smiling).

Always mistrust the several "nos", sports fans! Anyone else think that sounds suspiciously like Venus of yore, the Queen of De-Nile?

As far as pressers go, it was a classic. I think even Ruth, TW’s favorite Venus KAD, may have to admit that Venus gives the worst quote among all the top players. She’s just incredibly coy and obtuse, win or lose. Charlie Bricker tried privately to find out who Venus has been practicing with - curious geekery at it's best and least threatening - and he couldn't even get a straight answer from her on that!

Someone asked Venus what she planned to do between now and Wimbledon, and she replied:

. . . I just want to just get stronger and just get better. You know, I'm doing better. I can practice my serve a lot more. Obviously, at Wimbledon you'll see more consistency on that with my arm doing better and that kind of thing. Yeah, that's what I'll do, I'll be better every time.

I don’t know if the boast rings hollow, but it sure sounded that way, live. Venus delivered it in that distracted, spacey way that has become her trademark. Fair enough, that’s her style, but the substance is worth contemplating.

I think the biggest battle Venus will face will be staying focused and mentally alert. Fresh, if you will. Because right now, she seems to have the tennis pro's equivalent of what Viet Nam veterans took to calling “the thousand-yard stare.” It was a sign of having seen too much. Too much of everything.

We know that can happen to tennis players, too. Even recreational ones. It’s basically a loss of interest, a form of deep ennui. And if you get to the point where you can actually identify it, you may even think you’re capable, by sheer will, of transcending it.

It’s hard, though. Because no matter how hard you whack the ball or how diligently you hit the gym, you can’t win nearly as many tennis matches if the pure blue flame of desire is absent. It’s like being a good partner to someone you no longer love. You can do it, but it’s awfully hard.

Contrast, if you will, the attitudes of Venus and Martina Hingis. Even though she lost today, she had that spark in her eye and that hunger in her heart. She loves being in the game. The contrast was sharp as a slap in the face when she followed Venus and Vaidisova into the interview room, shortly after being spanked by Champagne Kim Clijsters.

Hingis was effervescent, that Cheshire Cat grin firmly pasted on her broad, pale face. She practically laughed through her answers, even though the very first question was unusually frank – and accurate - in the way that would earn an outraged glare from Sharapova.

She was asked, “Seems you’ve been able to deal with Clijsters’s power in the first set, then collapsed. What happened?”

Hingis took the medicine straight from the spoon. She answered, semi-sarcastically, but in a jovial way:

That's a nice analysis (smiling).

Well, she started off well. I was down 3 0 in like no time. Actually, 2 1, don't know. 3 0, it was. It would have been better if I had made one of the three games before, just stay close with her. It was always kind of running from behind.

Yeah, I mean, playing her only in the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam, it's not going to teach me how, you know, play someone like her. But hopefully I get to play her more and be in a better condition next time.

Hingis went on to talk about how nice it was to be back on tour, and to be doing the things she missed so much. I thought it might be interesting to know if he’s at that point in her comeback yet where she sometimes says or thinks, “Yep, now that’s one of reasons I left the game in the first place!”

She answered:

Oh, yeah, no kidding. It happened a few times. But then it's like the desire and just really to be playing, feeling good, winning matches that overcomes those things where you feel like, okay, you're exhausted, tired, really down. You have to get back to the basics. That's when you feel like, okay, this is not what I enjoyed when I was still playing like every day, the discipline.

Like during these 10 days I was here, just really, you know, always have to watch out what you do, how much you don't want to overdo it. Just always those two days I need to rest and recover and then, you know, just recharge batteries, then you overcome all these things. No, definitely a lot more joyful days than when you sit back and don't do anything.

I’d felt all along that Clijsters would probably be the biggest obstacle Hingis would face enroute to a potential final, and it turned out to be true – even more dramatically than I expected. Hingis said she was tired and a mite slugglish, fair enough. I thought Clijsters was bouncy and more than a mite slugger-ish. I asked Hingis to draw a quick thumbnail sketch of her opponent. She obliged.

Oh, she's just very. . .you know, she's very powerful, very physically strong from difficult situations. Although, somehow I felt like I wasn't playing the greatest tennis, which I had in the first few days and last week, that I was still kind of staying with her in the game. That's probably for me right now the tournament is over, I can take a lot of positives out of it.

In a way, this is the sport, this is tennis. You can't think that, Okay, whatever, what would have happened if? It just didn't. Just today she was better prepared.

You know, her game is on a very high level. You have to be ready to be pushing her. Otherwise, if you let her dictate, she's too good.

Nice analysis, right? Still, I don’t see Clijsters muscling Justine Henin-Hardenne around in the way she did Hingis. The Little Backhand that Quit is a more nimble, tensile, hardened combatant and, frankly, I think Clijsters is scared of her.

I wish Hingis would have a little more of Venus’s power, and that Venus would have a little more of Hingis’s power. By which I mean the Firekitten’s joie de jouer.


Thanx to member sassygirl from hingis.org