Bill talks tennis

Here are the tennis courts on which I grew up playing.

They’re holding construction equipment for a project that will soon overtake them. From that service line, I served out a title in the local Wimbleford high school doubles tournament (Get it? Weatherford, OK, plus Wimbledon? Get it? And don’t be too impressed with the title. It was doubles, and the competition was something less than fierce. But I still have the plaque.). This was a pseudo center court of sorts during the Thursday night scrambles. The courts where I practiced in my high school years were done in by school expansion. The courts I played on in college, probably 100 yards away from my dorm room, now hold a new dorm.

Her game was in such crisis that she fired her father/coach in the winter and hadn’t gotten around to officially replacing him yet. She lost four consecutive matches in the spring. She plummeted in the rankings. She bowed out in the third round of both the Australian Open and French Open.

Even with a Wimbledon draw that was falling apart left and right, and even with “Wimbledon finalist (2007)” already on her résumé, there was no particular reason to expect 28-year-old Marion Bartoli to snap out of a long funk and raise the Venus Rosewater Dish. But sports don’t have to make sense sometimes. Bartoli finished off a dominant two weeks in suburban London with a 6-1, 6-4 victory over Sabine Lisicki in Saturday’s Wimbledon finals.

As he sat during the changeover preceding the third set of his quarterfinal match with Fernando Verdasco, Andy Murray unleashed a lengthy monologue to no one in particular. (It was hard to make out every word through lip-reading, but “What are you DOING?” is the only portion that should be shared without censoring.) It actually looked like he was yelling at someone standing a few feet in front of him, but since there was nobody there, it appears he was simply yelling at Evil Andy, the being who had inhabited his body (and abandoned his forehand in the locker room) for the first two sets.

Murray never got his forehand back, at least not completely, but he survived. After losing eight of nine break points (on either serve) in the first two sets, he won eight of the final nine, capitalized on the one opportunity he got in the fifth set, and advanced to the semifinals with a 4-6, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4, 7-5 win.

He fits the stereotype perfectly: Lanky, powerful body. Huge serve. Even bigger forehand. Competent volleying ability for his size. On paper, it would seem like Juan Martin del Potro was custom built in a lab as the perfect grass court prototype. Granted, his movement at the net is only competent and not elite, but still, with that flat, devastating forehand and easy points off of his serve, del Potro was meant for Wimbledon.

Before 2013, however, the 24-year-old from Argentina (that’s right, he’s still only 24) had never even advanced past the fourth round at the All-England Club. He was swept out in the fourth round by David Ferrer last year. He lost in straight sets to Lleyton Hewitt as the No. 5 seed in 2009. He was knocked out easily by Stan Wawrinka in the second round in 2008. He suffered a wrist injury following his transcendent run to the 2009 U.S. Open title, and after a nine-month absence, it has taken him a while to return to that level of play again.

The viewer side of a rain delay differs from reality. The players leave the court for two hours, and when they return, we resume all of the story lines we were internalizing earlier, as if we had simply hit pause on a video game. For the players, though, a new match begins after the delay. You review and tweak your strategy, you go through your warm-up routine from scratch, and you start over.

Tuesday’s Sloane Stephens-Marion Bartoli match played out like two completely different matches. In the first one, Stephens’ serve carried her, enough that some blown opportunities on Bartoli’s serve (she let Bartoli off the hook at 4-3) didn’t seem like too big a deal. It felt like she was closer to breaking Bartoli than the other way around, and the match was more or less in her favor because of it.

Sports are unfair most of the time. Seeing greatness is like heroin -- one hit, and you’re completely hooked -- but most of the time, sports only tease you with greatness, especially at the individual level. Northern Iowa’s Ali Farokhmanesh killed UNLV and Kansas in the 2010 NCAA Tournament, then shot 2-for-9 versus Michigan State. Cincinnati’s Corey Dillon set the NFL single-game rushing record in 2000, and two weeks later, he rushed 16 times for 23 yards. Argentina’s Gonzalo Higuain netted a hat trick against South Korea in the 2010 World Cup, then scored once in three matches.

Hell, even the greatest are only great in spurts. The game after Michael Jordan made six threes and shrugged his shoulders in the 1992 NBA Finals, he shot 0-for-4 from 3-point range, and his team lost at home by 11. (That he was great enough to rebound so quickly and consistently is what made him Michael Jordan.) In a team sport, you can still win games when a specific player finds a funk; when you are in an individual sport, a funk means elimination.

Believe it or not, using the Advanced Baseline grass rankings (men, women), you’d have predicted 15 of 16 matches correctly today. But the one you would have missed was a doozie.

Serena Williams’ loss means that only three top-14 seeds reached the quarterfinals in the women’s draw (and two of them, Aga Radwanska and Na Li, play each other in the quarters). It also means that both defending singles champions -- Williams and Federer, who have combined to win this tournament 12 times -- failed to reach even the quarters.

Don’t let the smile fool you. Sabine Lisicki is the proverbial “crazy guy in the fight,” at least when grass courts are involved. Perhaps the only player capable of keeping up with Serena Williams from a power-and-movement standpoint, Lisicki not only kept up, she beat Williams, 6-2, 1-6, 6-4, in the Round of 16 at Wimbledon on Monday.

Williams had won 34 consecutive matches before Monday’s fight, but she battled herself early in the match, and she battled a fearless opponent late. Lisicki stood out of the way and let Williams’ errors carry her early; and when Williams found her rhythm, winning nine of 10 games and taking a 3-0 lead in the third set, it appears that she would survive the same type of speed bump that Svetlana Kuznetsova provided her in the French Open quarterfinals. But once behind, Lisicki relaxed and started to out-Serena Serena. She blew aces by the five-time Wimbledon champion, and she dragged Williams from one corner of the baseline to another. She broke Williams’ serve to get to 2-3, Williams broke back, and Lisicki broke again.

1. The effects of carnage. In case you hadn’t quite grasped how many big names fell on Wednesday, Friday’s Order of Play should do the trick. The second match on Centre Court is Nicolas Almagro v. Jerzy Janowicz. The third match on Court 1 is Viktor Troicki v. Mikhail Youzhny. The fourth match on Court 2 is a doubles match. A funny thing happens when eight former No. 1s lose in the same day: The star power goes with them.

2. Everything seems so orderly on paper. We can marvel at the Friday Order of Play, but that assumes that a full day of tennis will actually be played on Friday.

1. Boring day, please. We all need to catch our collective breath. After one of tennis’ strangest, most jarring days, we enter Day 4 of the Wimbledon Championships without a seven-time Wimbledon men’s champion (Roger Federer), without a five-time men’s finalist (Rafael Nadal), and without seven of the top 13 women’s seeds. Another day like yesterday, and we could end up with finals of Andy Murray v. Feliciano Lopez and Sabine Lisicki v. Marion Bartoli. And hey, good for them if that happens; but while upsets are good, some star power is good, too.

As strange as this week has been, the top half of the draw on both the men’s and women’s side has been mostly unaffected by upsets/withdrawals, it’s the bottom halves that have been hit with nuclear bombs.

Seven former No. 1s fell at Wimbledon on Wednesday, one of the most ridiculous, destructive days at a slam in tennis’ long history. Victoria Azarenka couldn’t go at all. Caroline Wozniacki slipped and fell, then fell again. Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic were blown off the court. Lleyton Hewitt was outhustled and outhit. Maria Sharapova slipped repeatedly, tweaked her hip, then was taken down by an opponent who wouldn’t buckle.

Of those six, only Sharapova was a true surprise. We could at least envision those losses taking place.

From virtually the first match on Monday, we’ve seen players slipping on the All-England Club grass. It’s what happens when the ground has not yet been trampled. It is gorgeous and slick. But either the slips have been more frequent in the first three days of the 2013 Wimbledon Championships, or they have simply been more costly. (Or, we’re just seeing them more because there are cameras everywhere.)

Whatever the case, the injuries and walkovers piled up on a devastating Wednesday. Women’s No. 2 seed Victoria Azarenka? Gone with hip and knee injuries sustained during an awkward Monday fall. Men’s No. 18 seed (and highest-ranked remaining American) John Isner? Out with what could be a severe knee injury sustained during a routine serve in the first game of the match. Men’s No. 10 seed Marin Cilic? Knee. Nadal conqueror Steve Darcis? Shoulder. Old-school grass-courter Radek Stepanek? Thigh. In the first three hours of play on Wednesday, there were five walkovers/retirements. Then women’s No. 9 seed Caroline Wozniacki twisted her ankle and got stomped by Petra Cetkovska in a match she honestly could have easily lost anyway.

1. Britain really, really wants a successful women’s player.

2. Too much orange, Fed. The All-England Club asked Roger Federer -- seven-time Wimbledon champion Roger Federer -- to wear different shoes because of orange soles. This tournament truly is a different animal.

Big day for Americans!

(Because Steve Darcis is Belgian and Rafael Nadal is Spanish, you see.) Challenge accepted! I’ll be attempting a waffles, peaches, brown sugar, and ham combination of some sort. Pictures forthcoming.

It is perhaps the most noteworthy two-match losing streak in recent tennis history. Almost 12 months after getting bombed off of Centre Court by a smoking hot Lukas Rosol, Rafael Nadal limped out of Wimbledon after a straight-set loss to Belgian Steve Darcis, 7-6, 7-6, 6-4.

After winning the first 34 first-round slam matches of his career, Nadal is now 34-1; after 32 of 35 matches at Wimbledon from 2006-11, Nadal has now lost two in a row; and after seemingly erasing all lingering doubts from the knee injury that cost him about seven months of action, Nadal is now back on the caution list.

Strawberries & cream pancakes.

(No, they do not use whipped cream at the All-England club. Call this a slight Americanization, though there is real cream involved, too.)

Fun fact: Albert Costa has as many grand slam titles as Andy Roddick. Costa never reached higher than sixth in the ATP rankings and only advanced past the fourth round of a slam twice. But like Yannick Noah (1983), Andres Gomez (1990), Thomas Muster (1995), and Carlos Moya (1998) before him, and like Juan Carlos Ferrero (2003) and Gaston Gaudio (2004) after him, Costa plowed through two weeks at Roland Garros in 2002 with defense and dirty shoes and lifted the the Coupe des Musquetaires. Gustavo Kuerten built a hall-of-fame resume with three French Open titles and never even made it to the semifinal of a different slam. Sergi Bruguera won two French Opens and never reached the quarterfinals of a different slam.

American tennis fans in the 1990s got used to the cycle: Root for your favorite American male in Australia, cede the game to clay-courters for a few months, then start caring 100 percent again around Wimbledon. It was just easier that way. Sure, there was a strange string of three American titles in four years (Michael Chang in 1989, Jim Courier in 1991-92), but in the 34 years before Chang and the 21 years after Courier, American men won once at Roland Garros (Andre Agassi in 1999). You and I have combined for as many French Open titles as John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, and Pete Sampras.

At 31, Steffi Graf had already retired. At 31, Martina Navratilova was in the process of being surpassed by Graf. She, Billie Jean King, and Margaret Court would each win just one more slam after their 31st birthday.

At 30, it appeared Serena Williams was just about done, at least when it came to showing a consistently elite form. She had thoroughly dominated at Wimbledon in 2010 but suffered a freak foot injury stepping on broken glass; during her recovery she suffered a pulmonary embolism. She returned in the summer of 2011 but lost in the fourth round at Wimbledon, fell to Sam Stosur in the 2011 U.S. Open finals, and, in 2012, lost in the fourth round of the Australian Open and in the first round of the French Open.

Honestly? I don’t even know what to say about this one. I only started writing about tennis here in January 2012, and Nadal missed about seven months with injury, and I’ve still written about the Nadal-Djokovic matchup quite a few times by now.

January 2012:

In the last 54 weeks or so, Sara Errani is 11-1 at Roland Garros. She had a lot of points to defend from last year’s French Open finals appearance if she wanted to stay in the WTA top five, and damned if she hasn’t done so. She has taken out two tough clay-courters in the last two rounds, too -- she overcame a first-set injury to knock off Carla Suarez Navarro, then she took down Agnieszka Radwanska in straight sets in the quarterfinals. She is solid on hard courts, but fantastic on clay, moving her opponent around, setting up great angles, and playing stellar clay-court defense.

Of course, to reach her second straight French final, she’ll have to pull off probably the best win of her career. Last year she got Sam Stosur, an enigmatic big-hitter, in the semifinals; this time around, she gets Serena Williams. Williams hadn’t reached the French semis in 10 years but overcame a game Svetlana Kuznetsova in three sets on Tuesday to get here. Williams dominated most of the way (she won 55 percent of the overall points, which is usually good for a straight-set win), but a blip in the middle of the match took this one to three. She won six of the first seven games, dropped eight of the next 11, then one six of the final seven to close out the match. She has conquered some Roland Garros demons, and now the only thing blocking her path to the finals is an opponent she has beaten five of five times.

Of the 16 competitors to reach the quarterfinals in either the men’s or women’s draw, 14 have won between 57 and 71 percent of their games in the tournament thus far. Serena Williams is the only one to win at a higher percentage (83 percent), and Svetlana Kuznetsova is the only one to win at a lower percentage (55 percent). Kuznetsova has looked sporadically great (as she tends to do), but Williams has just looked great.

That said, who won the last time these two met on clay? Kuznetsova.

Tommy Haas is 35 years old, but really, his legs are only about 32. He tore up his shoulder and missed all of 2003. He missed half of 2008 and most of 2010 as well.

Careers like this aren’t supposed to happen. Haas is only four years younger than Jimmy Connors was when Connors made his famed out-of-nowhere run to the U.S. Open semifinals in 1991. And now he faces the No. 1 player in the world, Novak Djokovic. Djokovic is widely seen as the only person who can prevent Rafael Nadal from winning his eighth French Open in nine years, but first he has to get past Haas, who downright whipped him, 6-2, 6-4, in the round of 16 at Miami not too long ago.

My wife and I were married in April 2005. She will occasionally do the math and say things like, “I thought we’d been married longer than that,” or, “It feels like we’ve been married forever.” I choose to take that in an “I can’t remember life without you” tone instead of, “Ugh, this is just droning on and on.”

Regardless, Roger Federer’s streak of slam quarterfinal appearances began in the summer of 2004. Therefore, to appropriate a line from a Dave Matthews song (a first for me here, I’m pretty sure), Federer’s streak has lasted forever.

Rafael Nadal came to Roland Garros, where he’s won seven French Open titles and 52 of 53 matches, riding a 15-match winning streak overall. After a long layoff with knee tendonitis, he has reached the final of every tournament he has entered, and he has lost only once since mid-February. During said 15-match winning streak, he had dropped just three sets -- two to David Ferrer and one to Ernests Gulbis. His domination of men’s clay court tennis led to our Advanced Baseline ratings to give him a patently ridiculous, 70-percent chance of winning the French Open.

Or to put it another way, AB decided he was more than twice as likely to win seven matches in a row against increasingly impressive competition as he was to not win seven matches in a row against increasingly impressive competition.

Barring a dramatic upset, we pretty much know what we’re going to get in this year’s French Open. On the men’s side, the odds are very good that the semifinals will pit Novak Djokovic versus Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer versus David Ferrer. Federer and Ferrer have looked fabulous, and while Djokovic and Nadal each plodded through a tough first-round match, they’re Djokovic and Nadal. They’re fine. Meanwhile, on the women’s side, we know we’re probably going to get Serena Williams versus either Sara Errani or Agnieszka Radwanska in one semifinal and Victoria Azarenka versus Maria Sharapova in the other. There are a lot more wildcards in the women’s draw, but only so many. If we only care about who’s making the finals, then we only have one or two must-watch matches in a given day, and the first week of the French Open could require minimal attention.

But the subplots are just so much damn fun. As with March Madness, the little stories are almost more enjoyable than the big ones.