A
decade or so ago, Serena and Venus Williams ruled tennis together,
swapping the No. 1 ranking and meeting in Grand Slam final after Grand
Slam final.
Serena, the younger of the two, still holds a spot at the top of the game.
Venus has not been there for quite some time.
So there was a turn-back-the-clock feel
to Day 1 at the 2013 US Open, when both sisters were about as good as
can be, dropping a combined four games in Arthur Ashe Stadium. Venus,
now ranked 60th, beat 12th-seeded Kirsten Flipkens 6-1, 6-2 Monday
afternoon, and then Serena reduced 2010 French Open champion Francesca
Schiavone to seeking comfort from a ball boy’s hug during a 6-0, 6-1
runaway under the lights at night.
Asked which meant more on this day, her
own victory or her sister’s, Serena replied, ‘’They’re equal. I
definitely was happy to see Venus win. I really was happy for her. I
know she’s been working hard. I know she had a tough opponent. For her
to come through was just awesome. Obviously, I want to do well, too.’’
For years and years, a first-round
victory by Venus at a major tournament would hardly merit a mention. She
has won seven Grand Slam titles and was the runner-up another seven
times (six against Serena).
And yet nowadays, at age 33, two years
removed from being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that saps
energy, hampered much of this season by a bad lower back, Venus entered
this US Open having won a total of three matches over the past five
major tournaments. Plus, in Flipkens, she was facing a semi-finalist at
Wimbledon last month who beat Venus on a hard court this month.
Looking very much like the player she
used to be, Venus smacked serves at up to 120 mph, returned superbly,
and covered the court well enough to hit a handful of swinging volley
winners.
‘’If Venus is there – if she’s fit, if
she’s focused – she’s a top-10 player,’’ Flipkens said. “Everybody who
knows a little bit of the game of tennis can see that. Today, she was
like a top-10 player.’’
On a day that began with a retirement
announcement by James Blake – a former top-five player who also is 33 –
Venus showed she’s still capable of big shots at big moments.
‘’I stay positive because I know I can
play great tennis. Sometimes you just have to go through more than what
you want to go through,’’ the American said after winning the first four
games and the last four games against Belgium’s Flipkens. ‘’Sometimes
you have to have losses.’’
She was No. 1 in 2002, but hasn’t
cracked the top 10 since she was No. 9 in March 2011. She hasn’t been
past the third round at a Grand Slam tournament since a fourth-round
exit at Wimbledon later that year. Indeed, Venus lost in the first round
in two of her previous four appearances at majors.
Her match was the day’s second in the
main stadium, and owing perhaps to the early hour – or the stricter
security measures, including new metal detectors, that led to long
delays for spectators entering the grounds – there were thousands of
empty blue seats in the 23,000-capacity arena.
The place was full for the night
session, however, when the No. 1-ranked and top-seeded Serena won the
first eight games, prompting Schiavone, in a brief moment of levity, to
walk behind a baseline and envelope a ball boy in a full embrace.
‘’I don’t need a hug in that moment,’’ Schiavone joked afterward. ‘’I need a game.’’
It was that kind of evening for
Schiavone, an often-demonstrative player who is certainly no pushover:
In addition to her triumph at Roland Garros three years ago, she was the
runner-up there a year later, and twice was a US Open quarterfinalist.
Ranked as high as No. 4, she is 54th this week.
‘’I knew playing a former Grand Slam
champion in the first round was a really, really tough draw,’’ Serena
said, ‘’so I tried to be super serious.’’
All told, the match took merely an hour.
And it ended right in time, as far as Serena was concerned, because a
light rain began to fall at the finish. Eventually, play was suspended
for the day, and the last match of the night session, 17-time major
champion Roger Federer vs. 62nd-ranked Grega Zemlja of Slovenia, was
postponed until Tuesday.
When Schiavone finally got on the board
more than 50 minutes into her match against Serena, hitting a volley
winner to hold serve and win her first game, she swung her right fist in
a celebratory roundhouse punch and shouted. Her face then broke into a
wide smile while she strutted to the sideline, and she tossed her racket
toward her changeover chair.
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