In early 2003, Daredevil was about to top How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days for the top grossing movie in America, Andy Roddick was preparing for his best year of tennis, and 21-year-old Serena Williams beat 22-year-old Venus Williams for the Australian Open title.
Australian Open 2017: Finals matchups could have a retro feel
After the No. 1 seeds fell, the remaining matchup possibilities look like the early 2000s all over again.
Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images
It was their fourth straight final against each other (they would make it five of six at Wimbledon later that year), but this one, a 7-6, 3-6, 6-4, Serena victory, was possibly the best match of the bunch.
In early 2009, Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” had just toppled Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” on the pop charts, America had just inaugurated Barack Obama in front of a record crowd in Washington DC (that’s an actual fact, not an alternative fact), and 22-year-old Rafael Nadal beat 27-year-old Roger Federer in five grueling sets to take the Australian Open title.
It was the duo’s third finals meeting in the last four slams; Nadal had won all three.
They have met only once in a slam final since.
These four players — Williams, Williams, Nadal, and Federer — have combined for 60 slam titles (22 for Serena, 17 for Federer, 14 for Nadal, seven for Venus) and 29 other finals appearances. They are all-time greats with infallible résumés and unmeasurable cultural impact. They are also old, or getting there. Only Nadal is under 35, and his grueling style of play means he has as many miles on odometer as the others.
Serena aside, it is perhaps too much to ask for these three to win slams or reach No. 1 in the world anymore. But it’s impossible not to long for another run or two. And we might be getting one (or more) as we speak.
In the middle of Saturday night in the States, the tennis world got turned upside down, but depending on your perspective, it might have just turned back rightside up.
In the fourth round of the Australian Open, as some were going to bed, men’s No. 1 seed Andy Murray got upset by 29-year-old journeyman Mischa Zverev; Zverev was to date mostly known for being the older brother of rising star Alexander Zverev.
Then, as some were waking up on Sunday morning, women’s No. 1 seed Angelique Kerber was getting blown off the court by American CoCo Vandeweghe. At the end of the 6-2, 6-3 shellacking, Vandeweghe hit a service winner, then shrugged and strutted to the net.
In tennis, every major upset becomes a referendum. If a top seed doesn’t win, that can be either a sign of great depth or poor star power. Fair or (more probably) unfair, the conventional wisdom drifts toward the former in the men’s tennis world and the latter in the women’s.
Only three combined top-four seeds in the two draws have advanced to the quarterfinals. Most notably, men’s No. 2 seed Novak Djokovic, a six-time Aussie champion, lost to Denis Istomin in the second round.
Be it parity or depth, good or bad, tennis is staring at one of its strangest majors in quite a while ... as long as you’re looking at the seeds, anyway. If you’re looking only at names, there’s something pretty familiar about all of this.
In the middle of 2016’s college football season, it looked like the 1990s all over again. Current and former powers like Nebraska, Washington, Colorado, Miami, and Michigan were in or hovering near the top 10. It felt strange and familiar at the same time.
Meanwhile, in Melbourne, tennis has brought back the 2000s. Amid all the upsets and uncertainty, it is quite conceivable that we end up with Federer-Nadal and Venus-Serena finals.
Australian Open men’s quarterfinals
17 Roger Federer v. Mischa Zverev
4 Stan Wawrinka v. 12 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
3 Milos Raonic v. 9 Rafael Nadal
11 David Goffin v. 15 Grigor Dimitrov
Australian Open women’s quarterfinals
7 Garbine Muguruza v. CoCo Vandeweghe
13 Venus Williams v. 24 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova
5 Karolina Pliskova v. Mirjana Lucic-Baroni
2 Serena Williams v. 9 Johanna Konta
Action begins at 9 pm ET on Monday night on ESPN2.
That won’t be the case if seedings hold, of course. With chalk, we’d be looking at finals of Serena vs. Garbine Muguruza and Milos Raonic vs. Stan Wawrinka. Those would carry plenty of their own story lines — Williams-Muguruza would the third meeting between the two in a slam final (Muguruza beat Williams in last year’s French Open finals), while Raonic-Wawrinka would pit a 26-year-old looking for his first slam title (Raonic) vs. a 31-year-old three-time slam champ gunning for his second Aussie championship. Not bad.
Also not bad: the other story lines still in flight during this fortnight.
- Karolina Pliskova (quarterfinal opponent: Mirjana Lucic-Baroni) is terrifying. The 6’1 Czech is the women’s fifth seed; she reached the U.S. Open finals last year by beating both Venus and Serena Williams, and she held a 3-1 lead over Kerber in the third set of the finals before faltering. The 24-year-old is a potential future No. 1, and while she had to go deep into a 10-8 third set to survive Jelena Ostapenko in the third round, she’s won eight of nine sets thus far.
- If Lucic-Baroni’s name sounds familiar, there’s a reason: At age 17, she reached the Wimbledon semifinals in 1999, beating Monica Seles in the early rounds before eventually losing in three tight sets to Steffi Graf. She dealt with an abusive father and money issues and spent about five years off the tour. A journeywoman for years, she pulled off one of her biggest wins against Radwanska last week, and she’s in her first slam quarterfinal in nearly 18 years. 18!
- Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (quarterfinal opponent: Wawrinka) is in his fifth Aussie quarterfinal. He reached the finals in 2008, and while he’s reached at least one slam semifinal in five of eight years since, he hasn’t yet reached another final. At 31, he’s attempting to pull a Wawrinka, a late-career breakthrough.
- Grigor Dimitrov (quarterfinal opponent: David Goffin) reached the Aussie quarterfinals and Wimbledon semifinals in 2014 and threatened to live up to an impossible “Next Federer” label. But his progress slowed. He briefly fell out of the top 30 in 2016 and advanced to even the fourth round of a major only twice in 2015-16.
- Vandeweghe (quarterfinal opponent: Muguruza), the 6’1 niece of former NBA player Kiki Vandeweghe, has been in a limbo of sorts for quite a while. Her powerful game drove her to the 2015 Wimbledon quarterfinals, and she looked like an up-and-coming star for quite a while, but she won just four matches in four 2016 slams, and at 25, she is approaching now-or-never time in her career. Her win over Kerber was a significant “now.”
- Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (quarterfinal opponent: V. Williams) is one of the best servers on the women’s tour and experienced a breakthrough of sorts at age 20 in 2011. She reached the quarterfinals of both the French Open and U.S. Open and finished the year ranked 16th. But her ranking has waffled steadily since then, and from 2012-16, she advanced past the third round of a slam only once (2016 Wimbledon). She’s still only 25, though, and just smoked No. 8 seed Svetlana Kuznetsova, 6-3, 6-3, in the fourth round.
- Johanna Konta (quarterfinal opponent: S. Williams) is a 25-year-old Aussie-turned-Brit and hardcourt dynamo. She reached the semis of last year’s Aussie Open before falling to Kerber, and she’s reached the fourth round of the last two U.S. Opens. She rose from 47th at the end of 2015 to 10th at the end of 2016, and she has defended most of her Aussie points. She has yet to drop a set in this tournament.
No matter who advances, there will be entertainment value and intrigue.
Still, until they cease to be options, the thought of two throwback finals is intoxicating. First of all, there’s the comfort food aspect of it: familiar names in familiar locales. Beyond that, though, there’s the story of everything it has taken for these four grand champions to even get this far.
There’s also the simple fact that all four have looked tremendous Down Under. Federer destroyed No. 10 Tomas Berdych in the third round, then outlasted No. 5 Kei Nishikori in five sets in the fourth. Any lingering issues from the knee injury that cost him much of 2016 are invisible.
Nadal survived a five-setter against Alexander Zverev, then ground out a four-set win over No. 6 Gael Monfils. Meanwhile, Venus and Serena have yet to drop a set.
Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images
When Nadal topped Federer in 2009, it felt like his reign over the sport had ended. Nadal, with his defense, tenacity, and lefty power, was custom-built to defeat the once-untouchable Fed. Federer was particularly shaken up in the post-match awards ceremony, as if he knew his time was over.
He then proceeded to win three of the next four slams.
Nadal missed significant time with injury in 2012-13, then won three of the next five slams upon his return. Serena Williams missed most of 2010-11, turned 30 (Steffi Graf won her last slam at 29), then won nine more slams. Venus Williams battled injury after injury and didn’t advance to the second week of a slam from 2011-14. She was back in the semifinals in last year’s Wimbledon, and she’s back in the top 10 now.
These four live to surprise. Do they have some more surprises in them over the next week?
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